


jumper

by petalloso



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Deaf Character, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21959533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalloso/pseuds/petalloso
Summary: “You don’t know who he is to you yet."“He isn’t anyone," Andrew says.The doppelganger flicks his fingers in dismissal. “He’s flighty at first. Don’t let him run.”“Should I care?”“We shouldn’t. It can’t be helped.”But everything could he helped. He wanted to punch himself in the face.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 56
Kudos: 160





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> life is rough my friends but this was fun
> 
> thanks for clicking, hope you enjoy! 
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: (blatant) allusions to self-harm & suicide, smoking (is bad for you!), injury/blood, non-consensual drug consumption, andrew beating someone up, references to abusive childhood 
> 
> hmu @petalloso.tumblr.com if you have any q's or just to chat 
> 
> x

Andrew wakes and his arms are bleeding. 

Except he has been clean for four years. And when he rinses the blood away the sink stains red with it, but his arms are bare of even a scratch. 

He has a mess of scars, most systematically placed but others more frantic in their pattern. But nothing new enough to bleed from. He blinks away the sleep from his eyes and peers closer at the skin. 

There are two scars he does not recognize, cut close and vertically to his wrists. They look freshly healed but badly, pinker among than the rest and deep enough to have needed stitches. 

He wraps his arms in gauze and calls it a trick of the light. 

Aaron almost runs into him when he steps out of the bathroom. His eyes widen when he takes in the sight of Andrew’s bandaged arms, the only tell of concern and a rare one at that. 

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” 

“You didn’t—”

“Don’t be stupid,” Andrew says. “Go back to sleep.” 

Aaron frowns and shoves past him into the bathroom, a more typical gesture than the carefully concealed concern from a moment ago. 

“Whatever,” he says before slamming the door. 

He won’t fall back asleep now even if he tried. So he grabs the keys on his way out of the front door. 

Despite now being summer, it is still cold this early in the morning. Andrew leaves the windows down anyway, his face and hands chilled to pink and his eyes wind burnt. 

He runs a red light because the road is empty and because he’s feeling stupidly reckless, and is just beginning to turn onto a new street when someone inexplicably materializes in front of his car. 

His foot hits the brake pedal but not quite fast enough. The front of his car bumps the person and sends him flying forward. He lands with an audible thud. 

Andrew has never killed someone (not without meaning to at least). He does not want this to be his first. 

“Shit,” he says to himself. Then he opens the door and gets out of the car. 

The person, or boy as it seems, is already rising from where he’d been knocked onto the pavement. He has a nasty scrape on the side of his face, and he wobbles precariously on one foot before finding his balance. But he isn’t dead. 

“You ran me over,” the boy says. His tone is more observant than accusatory. He reaches for an old duffel strewn a few feet away. 

“You came out of nowhere,” Andrew says. 

The boy looks directly at him then. His eyes glow in the grey of the early morning, enormous and bright blue, and so familiar Andrew almost asks him his name. 

“Maybe,” the boy says. 

His answer is disconcerting. So is his nonchalance. 

“Do you need a hospital?” Andrew says, watching the boy pull his duffel close to his body as though it were an infant to be protected. 

“No,” he says. “I’m fine.” 

“Okay,” Andrew says. “Bye.” 

He moves then to get back into his car and drive away, to write the entire morning off as a self-induced hallucination. Except the boy hobbles over closer to him, duffel held awkwardly in his clear discomfort, unsteady on his feet. 

“Wait a second,” he says. “Do you know how to set a shoulder?” 

No. He did not know how to set a shoulder. 

“You said you were fine,” Andrew points out. 

“You ran me over.” 

“I barely tapped you.” 

“I flew thirty feet.” 

“Not quite, dramaqueen.” 

“I can teach you how,” the boy says. “I just can’t do it myself.” 

Andrew looks at him carefully. The color of his eyes does not match the muddy brown color of his hair. His clothes are too big for him. He hides his pain well. 

At length he agrees, out of guilt, or because of some odd familiarity about the kid, or maybe because of something else entirely. 

“Where do you want me?”

The boy directs him towards the hood of the car, a solid surface, and then guides him through the motions. He easily muffles the sound of his pain when Andrew makes the final motion to pop his shoulder back in place. 

Andrew releases him quickly, stepping a distance away, and resists the urge to steady him when he wobbles. 

“Thanks,” he says, rolling his shoulder. 

“You don’t need a hospital,” Andrew says for clarification, even though he does not usually repeat himself. 

“I don’t need a hospital,” the boy confirms. 

“And you won’t sue me for malpractice?” 

“I think you need to be a practicing doctor.” 

“Then for running you over.” 

“So you admit to it.” 

“Not on record.” 

“Don’t worry,” the boy says. Andrew is annoyingly taken by his smile. “I’m not going to sue you.” 

“Okay,” Andrew says. He leans down to pick up the boy’s duffel. He takes it from Andrew quickly and swings it over his good shoulder. 

“Well, see you later,” the boy says. 

This was unlikely. Although Andrew finds himself thinking he wouldn’t mind. He nods anyway, gets into his car, and watches the boy for just a little longer, as he crosses the street and makes his way to the nearest bus stop. 

Then he drives away. 

  
  


He parks his car at the top of a hill near the hospital, with a view of the city, where families come for picnics and teenagers to make out, but which is empty now. He sits on the hood and watches the sun begin to rise. The orange of the light casts the trees’ branches in a pretty glow. 

He smokes through a quarter pack over the course of a few hours. He will reek of cigarette later and Aaron will undoubtedly whine about it. But his fingers won’t stop shaking. 

Eventually, he hops down from the hood, and immediately puts a hand out to steady himself. Suddenly his eyes burn and his head feels split, and his skin is itchy in a way that makes him want to rip it off like a piece of clothing. 

When the feeling subsides, he opens his eyes. 

A doppelganger watches him from a few feet away, his expression amused. He sits just as Andrew had a moment ago, perched on the hood and with a cigarette held lightly between his fingers, which are wrapped in dirty white sports-tape. 

It must be Aaron. Or perhaps a long lost triplet. He might laugh at the absurdity. 

The doppelganger looks like Andrew had years ago, hollower, skinnier, more dead than alive. But there are lines in his face Andrew does not recognize. There is an emptiness he does not know. 

“Hello,” the doppelganger says. 

“Hi,” Andrew says. Maybe his cigarettes are laced. Or he never woke up this morning and this has all been a dream. 

“It’s not the smoke,” the doppelganger says. “And you’re not dreaming.” 

“So they misdiagnosed me.” 

“Probably. But you’re not hallucinating either.” 

“You’re me.” 

The doppelganger shrugs. He tosses his cigarette to the ground. 

“Not totally. We are each a consequence of random variation. But we share most of the same basic elements.” 

Andrew searches his face. Something is clearly more wrong with this person than he himself is familiar with. This scares him in the way that heights do, because Andrew is familiar with most forms of tragedy but he does not recognize the kind in this man’s eyes. 

“What is wrong with you?” 

The doppelganger looks confused for a fleeting moment. He hides the surprise quickly. 

“Nothing you wouldn’t already know about.” 

“No,” Andrew says. “This is different.” 

“Oh,” the doppelganger says. “Maybe Abram.” 

“Who?” 

The doppelganger laughs. The sound is empty. 

“You’re a little behind. Maybe you’d know him as Neil?” 

“No.” 

“Tiny, redhead, weird eyes.” 

_ Oh.  _ Maybe. His hair did not match his eyes. His clothes were too big for him. 

“You know him,” Andrew says. 

“Not anymore.” 

Andrew recognizes the dismissiveness in his voice as something entirely but. His expression is flat but his body holds itself carefully, as though any sudden movement might break it. 

“Explain,” Andrew says. The doppelganger smiles. He doesn’t recognize the gesture. 

“He’s dead.” 

“So?” 

The doppelganger looks carefully at him, curious, realized. 

“You don’t know who he is to you yet.” 

“He isn’t anyone.” 

The doppelganger flicks his fingers in dismissal. “He’s flighty at first. Don’t let him run.” 

“Should I care?” 

“We shouldn’t. It can’t be helped.” 

Everything could he helped. He wants to punch himself in the face. 

“You make no sense.” 

“Does anything?” 

When on the receiving end Andrew hates his own crypticism. 

He is about to respond, to ask another question, maybe force a real and honest answer, when the doppelganger puts a hand up to stop him. 

“Feel that?” 

Something tugs at him then. Like a thread tied around his stomach being pulled. His heart pounds. His body aches, its every bone bruised down to the marrow. 

“You’re being rejected,” the doppelganger says. “Your timeline isn’t close enough to stay any longer. That’s lucky. Maybe it will be different for you.” 

“I’m not done,” Andrew says. But it is no use. Whatever pulls at him is stronger than he is. 

“Find him,” the doppelganger says. “He’ll explain.” 

“And then what?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” 

Andrew opens his mouth to say something but it is too late. Something like water but thicker rushes around him, filling every space of his body, swallowing him from the inside out. 

When he opens his eyes the doppelganger is gone. Andrew feels empty. Like every organ has been scooped out from inside, leaving him a bloodied pit of nothing. 

_ Find him _ , he had said. 

Fat chance. 

  
  


Andrew spends the rest of the morning and afternoon roaming the third-floor halls of the hospital. 

He tapes a dollar with sticky tape and uses it to steal half the contents of the vending machines. He leaves what he doesn’t like on the waiting room seats for wailing families to feed themselves and eats the rest. 

“Go away,” Aaron says when Andrew makes his way to his department. He is hovering over the front desk, scanning a pile of papers and looking a dipshit in his bright blue scrubs. 

“I’m bored,” Andrew says. 

“Be bored somewhere else.” 

“I did that.” 

“Then go home.” 

“I don’t feel like it.” 

“Christ,” Aaron says. “I’m busy. Go watch people cry in intensive care or something.” 

“Contrary to popular belief I’m not a sadist.” 

“You could have fooled me.” 

Andrew does not grace him with a response. He flicks him in the arm and walks away. 

He does make his way to the intensive care unit, not because he enjoys watching people suffer over the tragic failures of modern medicine, but because they have the best vending machines in the building. 

He is just picking up his three packs of bubblegum when out of some astounding miracle he spots something out of the corner of his eye – a head of familiar moppy brown rounding the far corner of the hallway. 

He is beginning to think something unlike coincidence is at hand. 

The boy is quick. He scans the hallway and then slips inside a door with the swipe of a key-card that most definitely does not belong to him. 

Andrew is also quick. His foot slips into the crack before the door fully shuts, and he shoves it open with a heavy shoulder. The door slams into something solid and bounces off. Someone makes a noise of both pain and irritation. 

Andrew closes the door behind him. 

“That hurt,” the boy says, rubbing his cheek. “Why do you keep doing that?” 

“It’s better than a car,” Andrew says with a shrug. 

“I guess,” he agrees. “What are you doing here?” 

“You’re stealing,” Andrew says. 

It’s more an observation than an accusation. The boy has plopped his unzipped duffel onto the floor and was beginning to scour the shelves for supplies to fill it with. 

“I’m borrowing,” he corrects. He holds a roll of gauze in one hand and a mysterious bottle of clear liquid in the other. 

“No one is going to want your bloody bandages back.” 

“Then I’m stealing.” 

“So then you  _ are  _ hurt,” Andrew says, as though he has already denied the very notion. 

“No,” he says as expected. “I just fell.” 

“Earlier you said you were fine,” Andrew says. 

“I am,” he says, and after a moment of hesitation, “our little meeting might have exacerbated things.” 

“You didn’t say anything.” 

“I didn’t want to.” 

“Still.” 

“Andrew,” he says in exacerbation. “It’s fine.” 

And then Andrew shoves him against the nearest wall and presses a knife to his gut. He has not used it in a long while but the weight is familiar in his hand, and he is not afraid to. 

“Ouch,” the boy says. He winces when Andrew presses the blade closer, not enough to break the skin, but enough for him to know it’s there. 

“I don’t remember telling you my name.” 

“Lucky guess?” 

“Funny,” Andrew says. This close he can see the flecks of blue in his eyes. The auburn color of his lashes. He can feel his chest rising and falling. 

“Would you believe I just had a feeling?” 

“Tell me who you are.”

“Guess.” 

“No.” 

“Because you already know.” 

Andrew jostles him. He hates the sound he makes at the pain in his shoulder and also that he right. 

His name sits easy and familiar at the roof of his mouth. It had since they first met that morning. He wouldn’t say it aloud, but that made no difference now. 

“Explain.” 

Neil smiles. Or grimaces. Andrew presses closer, pinning him to the wall with his own weight. The warmth of his body is familiar. He wants to be disgusted but Neil does not look afraid and the knife between them feels benign. 

“I only know as much as you do.” 

That’s a lie. Andrew is about to say as much when Neil’s body flickers like static underneath him. 

He steps away. Neil lands softly onto the ground and keels over, hands to his gut. For a moment Andrew thinks he mistakenly left the knife stuck in his belly, but a glance downwards easily proves him otherwise. He slips the knife back in between the fabric of his armbands and the layer of white gauze. 

“Shit,” Neil says. 

“What’s wrong with you?” 

“I’m unstable.” 

“In the head maybe,” Andrew says. Though he is beginning to suspect that accusation may apply more to himself. 

“Shit,” Neil says again. 

“Are you going to explain what’s happening?” 

“I don’t really feel like it.” 

“Do it anyway.” 

Neil makes a sound like irritation and then slides down on the wall to the floor. He breathes heavily. Andrew goes to his knees in front of him. 

“Give me a second,” Neil says.

“Tell me where you’re hurt.” 

“I’m fine.” 

Andrew wants to smother him. His own hands shake hovering over Neil. “Neil,  _ where?”  _

Neil makes a general motion with his hands. His chest heaves. Andrew puts a hand close to his stomach and waits for Neil’s nod of affirmation before touching him. 

He remembers this feeling from earlier but it shocks him still. His stomach is in his throat and every bone in his body is on fire. He turns away from Neil and dry heaves. 

When the discomfort passes, he turns back to Neil. Neil is looking at him with something like an apology in his eyes. He is still in pain. Andrew shifts closer to him. 

“Sorry,” Neil says. “I’m not in a lot of control right now.” 

“In control of what?” 

“Look where we are,” Neil says. 

Andrew looks. 

They are exactly where they had been. Except everything had been just slightly changed. The differences were only enough to notice if you paid attention to the details. 

The door was painted a darker shade of blue than before. The light was brighter. The shelves were one shelf shorter. Neil was bleeding. 

“Let me see,” Andrew says, a question framed as a command. Neil nods and Andrew carefully lifts the hem of his shirt. 

His torso was caked in dried blood. A line of stitches spread from one end of his stomach to the other, keeping closed what looked like someone’s attempt to gut him. But it had split open and was leaking blood. 

“It doesn’t feel awesome,” Neil admits. “My hands were shaky.” 

Andrew ignores the implication of that latter part. There was no other way to interpret it, but it was absurd to think Neil had stitched his own wound closed. 

“Hold still,” Andrew says. He removes his sweater and uses the sleeves to slow the bleeding. 

“You’re bleeding, too,” Neil says. He puts a finger to Andrew’s wrist where the gauze began. Andrew’s arm had grown warm. The white had bled through to become rusty red. 

“I’m not hurt,” Andrew says. 

Neil closes his eyes. His fingers move to rest gently on Andrew’s, which press to his wound, carefully but firmly. 

“This isn’t your first time doing this,” Neil says. 

“I can honestly say I have never attempted to fix someone’s home-sewn stitches.” 

“Not that,” Neil says with a small smile. “Jumping.” 

“That sounds stupid,” Andrew says. 

Neil shrugs and opens his eyes. “That’s because I made it up.” 

“Then it makes sense.” 

“Are you going to keep insulting me?” 

“Do you want my help?” 

“Yes,” Neil says. 

“Then, yes,” Andrew says. “But first you need to explain what this so-called  _ jumping  _ means.” 

“Okay,” Neil says. “Do you feel that tug at your gut?” 

“Yes,” Andrew says. 

“Right now we’re in a kind of variant of our own timeline. That tug means we’re about to be pulled back to our own.” 

“Okay,” Andrew says.

It was an impossible thing but so were his arms bleeding from nothing, and a copy of himself sat on the top of his car, and knowing Neil’s name without ever having heard it aloud. 

“The timeline will always recognize when something doesn’t belong. That’s the tug.” 

Neil puts his hand out, bloodied at the fingertips. Andrew takes it, the other still pressed gently to where he is bleeding. 

It hurts less returning than going. 

“Okay?” Neil says. 

Andrew says nothing. He lifts the fabric of his sweater sleeves from Neil’s stomach. The bleeding has stopped. 

“Now what?” Neil says. 

“Now we go home.” 

  
  


Andrew’s arms stop bleeding through the gauze in the car. But his hands are sticky with it. They do not speak on the drive home. 

He rinses his hands using the outside faucet before taking Neil inside. The door is unlocked. He hates to remind them to lock it but they always seem to forget. 

Aaron is already home, seated on the couch with a tray of half-devoured chicken nuggets on the coffee table. He does not acknowledge them at the door but speaks as they are about to make their way up the stairs. 

“Who is that?” He says. He is looking pointedly at Neil. 

Neil stands uncomfortably with one foot on the first step. 

“I ran him over,” Andrew says in lieu of some other more intelligible introduction. 

“So you brought home roadkill.” 

Neil makes an offended sound. Aaron looks at him, and after a moment gestures to the side of his own head with one hand. 

“You deaf?” 

“Hard of hearing,” Neil says. 

Andrew looks from his brother to Neil and then back again. He wonders when he became so unobservant he hadn’t noticed the hearing aids in Neil’s ears. He also wonders when Aaron became so observant he had. 

“Cool,” Aaron says, as though that were not borderline offensive. Maybe it wasn’t, because Neil smiles awkwardly and says nothing of it. 

“We’re leaving now,” Andrew announces, and gestures for Neil to follow him. 

In his bedroom, Andrew directs Neil to sit on his bed. Neil does as told, setting his duffel by his feet. 

Andrew begins with his face. He disinfects the scrapes on his cheeks from where he hit the pavement. They will scab but not scar. Then he slaps a bandaid on one side. 

He moves to Neil’s stomach next. He unwraps the rushed wrapping he had done at the hospital, then carefully disinfects the wound. 

Neil sits still, working his bottom lip with his teeth but otherwise making no indication he is in pain. Andrew rebandages his stomach and steps back to examine his handiwork. 

“Not very inconspicuous,” Neil says, gesturing towards his bandaged face. 

“Do you want it to be?” 

“I would prefer to blend in.” 

“I don’t think that’s likely.” 

“Why not?” 

“You aren’t the blendable sort.” 

Neil frowns, and then he plops onto his back, arms spread to his sides. 

Andrew sits beside Neil and lowers himself onto his back. As a child he used to look for shapes in the rough paint of the ceiling. To distract himself. Now he does not need to. 

“I know this ceiling.” 

Andrew says nothing. 

“And this house. This town. You.” 

“You said before there’s more than just one timeline,” Andrew says. “So we’ve met many times before. Maybe that’s why.” 

“Yeah,” Neil says, and then he laughs. It is a tired laugh, fatigued and beautiful and familiar as everything about him is. 

Andrew takes the floor. It is not even evening yet but they would both sleep easily. 

  
  


Andrew wakes and the sheets are too soft and the light is too golden. There is a cat curled up by his chest. He reaches to touch it and it lifts its head and makes a chirping sound. 

Someone walks into the room. His hair is wet and he is dressed in sweatpants and a soft looking t-shirt, both of which are too big for him. His arms are heavily scarred. His face is more so. 

“Oh,” Neil says, toweling off his hair. “I thought I heard you in the kitchen.” 

He speaks not aloud but with his hands, signing the words in the air in front of him. Andrew understands him though he does not know how or why. 

He says nothing. Neil looks at him for too long a moment before something like recognition settles into his expression. 

“You’re not my Andrew,” he says, speaking aloud now rather than signing. 

“You’re not my Neil,” Andrew says. 

“No,” Neil agrees. 

The scars on his face are drastic, three long slashes on one cheek and a collection of burns on the other. They have been healed for a very long time. 

“Where am I?”

“Home,” Neil says. “Or it will be. Shit. Sorry, it’s been a while. I wasn’t supposed to say.” 

“Too late.” 

“Yeah,” Neil says. “But it doesn’t matter so much if you’re from a more divergent timeline.” 

He means the statement as a question. 

“I don’t think so,” Andrew says, because there is no tug in his gut. He feels settled and safe here, comfortable despite himself. 

“Where am  _ I _ ?” Neil asks. “In your timeline.” 

“Sleeping.” 

“Oh, cool.” 

Someone else walks into the room then. Andrew has met a counterpart of his own before, but this version startles him more than the first and for an entirely different reason. 

“Neil,” he says. “You have a guest.” 

“Andrew,” Neil says. “This is Andrew.” 

“I gathered.” 

“I think maybe they just met.” 

“How nostalgic.” 

“Don’t be a dick.”

“Whatever,” Andrew says, although his voice is something like fond. “Why are you here?” 

This is directed at Andrew. 

“Accident.” 

Andrew, who is older and stockier and less pale in the face, softer around every edge, makes an annoyingly knowing face. 

“You can’t control it.” 

“Can you?” 

Older-Andrew shrugs. “I was taught.” 

“By who?” 

“By him,” Older-Andrew says, gesturing towards Neil. 

“He doesn’t trust me,” Andrew says, because he knew it was true though his own Neil had not said it, and because out of anyone in the world he would only trust himself to admit it to. 

“He will,” Neil says before Older-Andrew can speak. “Try Abram.” 

“I don’t want something he hasn’t given me.” 

“Smart,” Neil says with a solemn nod. “Except it will end the same regardless.” 

“Badly?” Andrew says. 

“Depending on your definition,” Older-Andrew says. He looks at Andrew as though he understands him completely. Andrew supposes he must. 

“I need to go back.” 

“It’s not really a conscious effort,” Neil says. “It will happen on its own if you stay too long.” 

Andrew looks at him. The cat jumps down from the bed and rubs itself against Neil’s legs. He bends down and runs a hand over its back. 

“Your face,” Andrew says. 

Neil does a good job at hiding his surprise. Perhaps it was a universal trait. He waits for the cat to walk away, tail held high, before speaking. 

“You’re so behind,” Neil says. He sounds almost nostalgic. And a little sad. 

“And you’re so old.” 

“Twenty-three, actually. You’re probably just a year away.” 

“Spoilers, Neil,” Older-Andrew says. He does not sound too upset about it, though. 

“So what happened?” Andrew says. 

Neil shrugs. “I didn’t run.” 

“Sounds fake.” 

“People change.” 

“Not in my experience,” Andrew says. Except despite everything he wanted that to be true. If for anyone, than for himself. 

“You’ll find out for yourself soon enough,” Older-Andrew says. “Feel that?” 

“Shit,” Andrew mumbles. His stomach lurches. 

“Your time is up,” Older-Andrew says. 

“See you later,” Neil says, and waves. 

Neil is still sleeping. Andrew readies himself quietly so as not to rouse him. But he is apparently a light sleeper, because he rustles when Andrew bumps against a drawer and wakes a moment later. 

His hair sticks up at odd angles. He rubs his eyes and blinks in the light of the early morning. Andrew waits for him to put in his hearing aids, a quick task done with practiced hands. He ruminates on the notion that Neil felt safe enough to take them out to sleep in the first place. 

“Morning,” Neil says. His voice is groggy with sleep. 

“Morning,” Andrew says. 

Andrew leaves him to fully awaken on his own. He pours himself a generous helping of frosted flakes and skips the milk. Aaron gives him a scrutinous look, as though his dietary choices were any superior to his own. 

“Who’s your guest?” Nicky asks from the stove, and then yelps when only one half of his omelette lands inside the pan. 

“Neil.” 

“Where did you get him?” Nicky says. His omelette tears tragically in half in his attempt to salvage it. 

“Nowhere,” Andrew says. 

“You brought him home,” Aaron points out. 

“Yes,” Andrew says. 

“So then where did he come from?” 

“I simply could not tell you.” 

“I hate you,” Aaron says. 

“Thank you,” Andrew says. 

Nicky laments over his omelette. Andrew pours himself another serving of frosted flakes. Neil arrives. 

He has not bothered to change out of his sweatpants or even wrestle down the bird’s nest that is currently his hair. He does, however, now have brown eyes rather than blue, and eyes Aaron and Nicky with a sort of wariness Andrew recognized as distrust. 

“Good morning,” Nicky says with a smile too bright for so early in the morning. 

“Um, morning,” Neil says. 

“I’m Nicky.” 

“Neil. Thanks for having me over.” 

“Of course,” Nicky says. He elbows Aaron in the ribs. 

“Welcome to the shithole,” Aaron says whilst glowering at Nicky. 

“Frosted flakes,” Andrew says, nodding at the box on the countertop. 

“Do you have something less sugary?” 

“Picky eater,” Andrew says. 

“You’re welcome to go through the fridge,” Nicky says. 

“Thanks,” Neil says. To Nicky’s dismay he does not. Instead he settles for a too brown banana and a black coffee. 

Disgusting. 

  
  


Neil goes for a run. He says to help him get to know the neighborhood, to rid his body of restlessness. It makes Andrew nervous. He wasn’t healed. And the words of his earliest met doppelganger echo relentlessly in his head. 

_ He’s flighty at first. Don’t let him run. _

He lets him run. He steals Aaron’s laptop and takes it upstairs with him. The password is easy to guess. His search yields far too many videos to choose from, so he clicks on the first one and settles into the pile of pillows. 

His hands move clumsily in the air. The woman on screen signs that while the motions of your hands are important, facial expression is just as essential, and gave more meaning to everything. 

The latter would be the more difficult part. Everything else was intuitive, and his memory helped him to remember the signs easily enough. 

“What are you doing?” 

Andrew closes the laptop. 

Neil is pink in the face and watching him. His fringe falls onto his forehead with sweat. 

“Where have you been?” Andrew says in lieu of an answer. He was not embarrassed. That feeling was foreign to him. Rather he was uncertain how Neil might react given the truth. 

“I wasn’t going to leave,” Neil says. As though he could read Andrew’s mind. This was a rather disconcerting thought and one Andrew refused to entertain despite its realistic possibility. 

“I didn’t think you would.” 

This was not strictly true. It was not a complete lie, though, so Andrew felt less bad about saying it. 

“I can teach you,” Neil says. “If you want.”

“I don’t want anything.” 

“I can still teach you.” 

“Fine,” Andrew says. 

“I’m gonna shower first,” Neil says. 

He takes his duffel with him. Andrew busies himself with a new video about helpful medical signing vocabulary.

Neil is quick. He steps back into the room with bare feet and wet hair that falls prettily onto his forehead. His shirt and sweats look faded and too big for him. The image reminds him of another Neil, with a scarred face and a cat and a kind of contentedness to him that this Neil did not yet have. 

He shifts to make room for Neil on the bed, who settles easily, sitting cross-legged in front of Andrew. His knees almost but don’t quite touch Andrew’s own. Andrew tosses him a pillow, which he places onto his lap and rests his forearms on. 

“How much do you know?” 

“My name is Andrew,” Andrew signs, slower in the spelling of his name. “It’s nice to meet you.” 

“It’s good to meet you,” Neil signs with a small smile. 

Andrew signs the rest of his learnt vocabulary. Neil watches him carefully and responds slowly so Andrew can interpret him easily. 

“You know so much,” Neil says aloud. ”Did you just start?” 

“It’s mostly intuitive.” 

“Yeah,” Neil says. “But people still don’t pick it up as quickly.” 

“Sign something new,” Andrew says. 

“Run,” Neil says aloud as he signs it. He waits for Andrew to mimic the motion. 

“I will not run,” Neil signs. 

“How do you sign liar?” 

“Dick,” Neil says and signs. 

“You don’t need to reassure me. I don’t care.” 

“You don’t care,” Neil repeats. 

“Yes.” 

“I think you do,” Neil says. “Or some version of you does.” 

Andrew plops down onto his back. “Maybe if you taught me how to control it, I would know for sure,” he says. 

He cannot see Neil’s expression, but the tone of his voice is easy enough to interpret. 

“I can’t.” 

“Then  _ tell _ me how to do it.” 

“Why do you want to?” 

“Maybe I’m bored here.” 

“But you’re not reckless. And that’s what jumping is.” 

He could not disagree. He could easily imagine the ruins people would bring about given the chance to do what they could, the things they might steal from one world to bring to another. Out of greed. Out of grief. 

If he were someone with lesser self-control, of which he had only in recent years developed, he could think of a few things he might take himself. 

“So why do you do it?” He says. 

“I don’t,” Neil says. “Not unless I’m forced to.” 

“Why would you ever be forced to?” 

Neil sighs and lays beside Andrew, leaving a comfortable space between them.

“I can’t tell you just yet,” he says. 

When Andrew turns to look at him, his eyes are closed. He looks so tired. The purple of the skin beneath his eyes, the grim line of his mouth, the clench of his jaw, working his teeth to dust. 

He is also beautiful. 

Andrew looks away.

  
  


Neil falls asleep. Andrew leaves him to rest and wanders downstairs. Nicky is seated on the couch playing a shooter game. Andrew takes a gallon of ice cream from the freezer and sits at the opposite end to eat. 

“Where’s Neil?” Nicky says, thumbs fiddling angrily with the controller, but his expression perfectly tranquil. 

“He’s napping,” Andrew says. The ice cream hurts his teeth. He presses his tongue to them. 

“Good,” Nicky says. “That boy looks like he hasn’t slept properly in years.” 

“Yeah,” Andrew agrees. 

“He’s nice,” Nicky says. “He’s a little cagey, though. He reminds me of a feral cat. A cute one.” 

“Careful,” Andrew says, pointing a spoonful of ice cream at Nicky in warning. A drop of it lands on the sofa. He wipes it with his leg. 

“Hey,” Nicky says. “I’m just being observant. Promise I won’t bother him. How long is he staying, anyway?” 

“As long as he lasts,” Andrew says. 

“Are you afraid he won’t be able to handle us?” 

“It’s not him I’m afraid for.” 

“Oh,” Nicky says. He pauses his game and looks at Andrew, suddenly far more interested than before. “Is he a wild child?” 

“You could say that,” Andrew says. 

“Well, I hope he stays,” Nicky says. “I love him already.” 

Andrew snorts. And then chokes on ice cream. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Nicky’s wish comes true. Neil stays. 

They do not broach the topic. Maybe for fear of jinxing it. Andrew buys an air mattress and Neil takes the bed permanently. 

They spend their time wasting it, but without any sort of guilt that might usually accompany doing absolutely nothing. Andrew drives them to viewpoints and they sit silently to watch the sun set, sharing a cigarette or a joint. 

Neil buys fruit too ripe to last long and then scrambles to eat it before its spoiled. Andrew buys lemonade and hot cheetos and the sorts of food he reserved for the summer months.

Neil grows skilled at annoying Aaron. His video game strategy is in fact no strategy, and to Aaron’s dismay, this results in his winning approximately nine times out of ten. 

Nicky cleans the house and cooks and calls Erik at least three times a day. Andrew works the dishes at Eden’s and Aaron works long hours at the hospital. 

Sometimes Neil is gone when Andrew comes home, and Andrew sits on the couch with the television on, trying to not think the worst until Neil comes walking back through the door. 

What he does while out is a mystery to Andrew. He rarely bothers to ask. 

Neil teaches him more sign. He picks it up quickly, as though it were a language he had always been fluent in. And maybe it was. 

He helps Neil to dye his roots that gross muddy brown. He attempts to get him to throw out his colored contacts, but to no avail. 

He ruminates over the things he already seemed to know about Neil, that were so familiar to him already it was like they were about himself. Like how he bit his bottom lip when anxious, how he tried to hide the pain in his sore feet after running too long in the morning, how he liked fruit but only when they grew too ripe. 

He would only sit on the outside of a restaurant booth. Would not smoke with anyone but Andrew. He did not untie his laces when removing his shoes. He did not sleep well. 

These were things only noticed and learned after years of companionship, but Andrew noticed them and knew them without ever having been told. Andrew did not think too hard about why that might be. And Neil would not talk about it either. 

Mostly Andrew indulged in the lazy way of summer. 

It had always been the most difficult part of the year. Time would slow. His skin would burn. His arms would itch beneath layers of bandages and long sleeves. He could not seem to eat. 

There was no school to excusably keep him away from whatever foster family he happened to be living with at the time. There was too much time. Too little to occupy himself with. He would hurt himself twice as often. 

He hadn’t been intent on self destructing for so long. Still, the urges were there, the reminders faint aches where he’d once dug a razor into his skin and watched it bleed. 

He does not bleed again, not as he had mysteriously that first day he had met Neil. But his arms will ache and sometimes he will not know if it is from the memory or from something else. He does not ask Neil of it. 

And now he does not mind the summer season so much. The sun left him lazy and slow. The air was syrup. He felt like going out. He stubs his cigarette out in the soil of a potted plant and goes inside. 

Neil is laying on the couch with the television on. His feet are elevated on a pillow, which means he ran for too long and they are hurting him. He signs hello to Andrew when he sees him. Andrew signs back. 

Then he tosses a paper bag onto his stomach. Neil makes a dramatically discontented sound. The wound on his stomach healed weeks ago. Andrew had acted nurse throughout the entire healing process. So he knows Neil is not hurt. Just dramatic. 

“Get dressed,” he says. 

“What, now?” 

“Yes, now.” 

“You couldn’t have mentioned going out earlier?” 

“Do you have something better to do?” 

“Asshole,” Neil says, because the answer is no and they both know it. Still Andrew spots his tiny smile on his way to get dressed. 

  
  


He is driving distracted. 

He can see Neil in the rearview mirror, staring absently out the window. Nicky chose the outfit well. Andrew won’t say it but he appreciates the all-black ensemble, the mesh cut outs, the fittedness of the fabric. 

Neil does not look particularly excited to be dressed irregular to his usual drab clothing. But he does not look uncomfortable. Andrew had yet to convince him to remove his absurd colored contacts, and he vaguely mourned the possibilities. But he appreciated the look still. 

Neil catches his gaze in the mirror. 

“Okay?” He signs, mouthing the word with the motion. 

Andrew nods. Then he adjusts the mirror to remove Neil from view and grips the wheel a little tighter with one hand. 

At Sweetie’s, Andrew places a small stack under the pile of napkins at the table, and watches Neil realize the exchange. He says nothing, and refuses Andrew’s bowl when he nudges it towards him. 

“I don’t like ice cream,” he says. 

“Your loss,” Andrew says, and shovels down the soupy half he had thought to save for Neil. 

Before leaving Nicky demands help with his makeup in the bathroom and drags a disgruntled Aaron along with him. Andrew and Neil wait in the back alley with the car, sharing a cigarette and listening together to the passing cars on the freeway. 

“Dust?” Neil says when he passes the cigarette over. Andrew had expected the question, so it does not take him long to deliberate over an answer. 

“Aaron,” he says simply. “Dust is better than the alternative.” 

“He uses,” Neil realizes. Or maybe he had already known. It was not a difficult thing to guess. 

“You couldn’t tell from the track marks?” 

Neil shakes his head when Andrew offers the cigarette back. 

“He works at a hospital,” Neil says. 

“He stopped using in high school,” Andrew says. “They don’t know. He would lose his internship.” 

“Is that why…” 

Andrew understands the meaning of the question immediately. His arms begin to itch underneath his bands. 

“No,” he says. 

Neil does not ask for elaboration. Nicky and Aaron arrive only a moment later. Andrew watches Neil carefully as he walks back to the car. He had a slight limp and leaned too heavily to his right. It was hardly noticeable – practiced until the pain was entirely forgotten. 

He puts out the cigarette and follows.

Once they arrive, Andrew goes straight to the bar and orders a round enough for everyone. Neil refuses his drink when Andrew offers it, and so Andrew has it for him. 

Overhead, a mishmash of music plays and cannot be blamed on a bad DJ. Something like a ballad melds into something more techno into something orchestral. Andrew blinks and the room is empty. He blinks again and the room is full. 

He ignores it. His arms ache for the first time since that day weeks ago but there is no tug at his gut. Neil makes no indication he is sharing the experience, and Andrew does not feel like asking. 

“I’m going to dance,” Nicky announces, and then pulls a reluctant Aaron along with him to the dancefloor. 

“Go,” Andrew says to Neil, who is nursing a soda and who eyes the room like it is some place to escape from. 

He was always pretty to look at. But Neil was particularly gorgeous in this awful club lighting. 

“I don’t really dance,” he says. 

“Then don’t,” Andrew says, and then leaves to find Roland. Because he can't stand to look at Neil right now. Because his stomach hurts and his eyes burn and the music is too loud. 

“Hi, Andrew,” Roland greets. He spots Andrew before he can think to change his mind and return back to Neil. 

“Hi,” Andrew says, seating himself on an empty stool. 

“It’s been awhile,” Roland says, his hands easy-moving as he pours Andrew his regular. 

He had seen Roland just yesterday when he came in for his shift. But Roland meant something else. 

“Yeah,” he says. 

“You look good tonight.” 

Andrew says nothing in response. Normally he wouldn’t allow Roland such easy compliments. Today he does not care. 

“Should I take my break?” 

Perhaps any other night Andrew might have said yes. And he had just three weeks ago, tens of times before that, too. Roland was easy to please and followed orders. And when his hands got too curious Andrew was quick to stop him and he was not offended by it. 

Any other night Andrew would have said yes. His stomach wanted it. He wanted it. 

“No,” he says. 

“Okay,” Roland says easily. He pours Andrew another drink, though he has not finished his first one. “Let me know if you change your mind.” 

Andrew stays a while longer at the bar. He watches Roland pour drink after drink and flirt with every other customer. His own drink tastes like gasoline and his head hurts. Eventually he leaves the counter to find the others. 

He maneuvers through the mess of people in search. He spots Neil quickly, moving sloppily on the dancefloor. He looks confused and unhappy. Andrew moves more quickly towards him. 

Someone is beside him, hands on his waist and tugging hard. Neil moves to get away but the man leans over him and whispers something into his ear. Neil grimaces but his body sags. 

Andrew reaches them. He twists the man’s wrist until it is just ready to snap and no further. 

“Fuck!” The man says, his cry heard even over the bass overhead and the many bodies jumping to its beat. 

Andrew releases him and tugs Neil closer to him. 

“What the fuck, dude!” 

“Leave,” Andrew says, because if he does not Andrew will kill him right there and leave his blood to stain the dancefloor. 

“Does he belong to you?” 

Andrew uses one hand to shove the man backwards, the other still twisted in the hem of Neil’s shirt to keep him close. 

The man retreats. Andrew pulls his attention back to Neil, who sways underneath Andrew’s hands, his faux brown eyes glassy. 

Andrew drags him into the bathroom and seats him on a toilet lid. He is easily moved, pliant underneath Andrew’s hands. Andrew wants to punch something. His arms burn. 

“Neil,” he says. 

“Yeah.” 

“What did you drink?” 

“I hate drinking.” 

“It was spiked.” 

“My head hurts, Andrew.” 

Andrew moves the hair from his eyes with gentle fingers. His skin is damp and cold.

“I’m going to help you.” 

Neil nods but his chin falls to his chest. His body flickers. Andrew is in front of empty space and then in front of Neil once again. 

“Neil,” Andrew says, easing the panic knotting in his gut. “You cannot jump right now. Control it.” 

“I can’t,” Neil says. He sounds so young, his voice like a child’s voice, hurting. His head falls into Andrew’s open palm and his eyes shut. 

“Abram,” Andrew says. 

He told himself he would not use something Neil had not given him but he does not know what else to do. He could not lose him. Not now. 

Neil stills where he had been shaking. His body, once flickering like static, stabilizes. 

“How do you know that name?” He says, voice tired and words slurred. 

“You’re not the only one who’s paid visits to our lovely counterparts.” 

“I didn’t get your name from another timeline.” 

“I know.” 

Neil groans and falls forward. His forehead plants onto Andrew’s shoulder. Andrew holds him up. He contemplates forcing him to throw up, but sticking his fingers down Neil’s throat right now did not seem the most ideal. 

Instead he takes Neil with him to the counter. 

“Roland,” he says. “Water.” 

Roland was not stupid enough to hand him a glass. He tosses Andrew a capped bottle instead. Andrew listens for the click that meant it had not yet been opened and then gives it to Neil. 

“Who’s the guy?” Roland says, eyeing him with curiosity. 

“No one,” Andrew says, taking the bottle back from Neil before he spills water all over himself. 

“He’s cute.” 

“He doesn’t swing.” 

“What, with the way he’s hanging off you?” 

“His drink was spiked.” 

Roland turns white in the face and leans backwards away from them. “Oh, shit.” 

“I need you to turn off the backdoor security cameras.” 

Neil mumbles something incoherent beside him. He sounds angry and looks as though he is about to pass out. 

“Okay,” Roland agrees. “Just be careful.” 

Andrew takes Neil with him to find his family. They are easy enough to spot. Aaron is sweaty and miserable in his usual sad corner of the club. Nicky is dancing not far from him. 

Neither of them are sober enough to argue with Andrew when he demands they leave. 

“Where are you going?” Nicky says once they are seated in the car. Andrew folds a dirty sweater messily and places it underneath Neil’s lolling head. 

“I’ll be back,” Andrew says. “Make sure he doesn’t choke on his own vomit.” 

“What should I do if he does?” Nicky says. He looks concerned but confused. He has one hand wrapped around Neil’s forearm, the other clenched into a fist in his lap. 

“Call an ambulance.” 

He finds the man inside and drags him to the back alley. 

The only thing that stops him from killing the man is knowing Nicky and Aaron are not sober enough to get home alone. Or to make sure that Neil stays okay. 

He leaves the man crying on the pavement, and nurses his own bruised knuckles on the way back to his family. 

It had been a long time since he had felt that sort of pain. 

On the drive back home, Aaron watches him carefully from the passenger seat. He sobers quickly. Enough to be angry but not enough for much else. 

“What the fuck was that?” 

“Nothing,” Andrew says. 

“Don’t play dumb. That is not your own blood.” 

Aaron means the red stained on Andrew’s knuckles, which is beginning to dry and flake off onto his lap. Andrew says nothing. Aaron will continue talking regardless. 

“You’re on parole. Have you forgotten what happened last time you beat the shit out of somebody?” 

“He got what he deserved.” 

“And what about you?” 

“Concern doesn’t suit you.” 

“Fuck you,” Aaron spits. 

“I know what I’m doing,” Andrew says. He means to reassure but it sounded more condescending. 

“What changed?” 

Again, Andrew says nothing. Neil stirs in the backseat. Maybe Aaron was smarter than Andrew gave him credit for. 

Or maybe Andrew is just getting predictable. 

“Neil,” Aaron says. There is understanding in his voice. And disdain. 

“Don’t,” Andrew starts. 

“Don’t what?” 

“Just don’t.”

Aaron laughs, a bitter and drunken sound. “I don’t trust him. And I’m surprised you do.’ 

“I know what I’m doing,” Andrew says again. 

“But he’s still here.” 

“Yes,” Andrew says. “And trust me when I say he would not be if I did not allow it.” 

“I’m not going to sit around while you play with your little boy toy and make excuses about it.” 

“That is not what he is.” 

“Then what is he?” 

“I will kick you out of this car.” 

“It’s a ten mile walk.” 

“Then you better stop talking.” 

Aaron mumbles something underneath his breath, but silences. 

He wakes Neil with a tug at his sleeve and helps him to unbuckle himself. He slumps in Andrew’s arms, failing to keep himself upright. 

“Sorry,” he says. It is barely coherent but he signs the word, too, one hand fisted to his heart. 

“Don’t be,” Andrew says. 

Nicky leaves the door open for them and clears the pathway to Andrew’s bedroom. 

Andrew guides Neil up the stairs and deposits him onto the mattress. Neil flops his head onto the nearest pillow and makes a noise of discomfort. 

Andrew manages to get a trash can in front of him before he empties his stomach all over the bed. He leaves to bring him back a glass of water. Neil spills half of it down his shirt. 

“What happened?” 

His words are less slurred now. Maybe Andrew should have forced him to puke his guts out earlier. 

“Somebody drugged you.” 

“Oh,” Neil says. He looks up at the ceiling, his eyes watery and the wrong color. Andrew hears him swallow. 

“You know,” Neil says after a long moment. “You’re a really fast learner.” 

“Okay,” Andrew says.

“I mean it. But you pretend you don’t care. I hate it.” 

“I hate you.” 

“I believe you,” Neil says with a lazy smile. “But I think you like me, too.” 

“Think again.” 

“I don’t want to,” Neil says. “It hurts my head.” 

He slumps forward. Andrew steadies him with two hands to his shoulders and lays him back down with his head on the pillow. 

“Why did you give me the bed?” Neil says.

“Because,” Andrew says. Because he is not sure what else he would have done. Uncertainty seemed to be a common theme of his nowadays. 

He wished he would say. And rarely was anything worthwhile enough to provide an answer for. Except, apparently and always, Neil. 

“Thank you,” Neil says. His lashes flutter as his eyes struggle to stay open. “It beats park benches.” 

“One day soon you’ll have to explain that to me.” 

“As if you don’t already know.” 

“Tell me anyway.” 

“Okay,” Neil says easily. “I trust you.” 

“Go to sleep,” Andrew says. 

“Goodnight,” Neil says. 

“Goodnight, Neil,” Andrew says, and turns off the lights. 

  
  


Andrew wakes in some kind of office. The windows are shuttered and the walls are bare. The floor is cold beneath his cheek. He rises. Neil sits with his feet on the desk. 

“You weren’t what I was hoping for,” Neil says. 

“What were you hoping for?”

“Me,” Neil says. 

Andrew takes a moment to look at him. He looks the same but meaner. Less caring. More reckless. More violent. Again his face is scarred. These scars looked less healed than those of the first alternate version of Neil he had met. 

“I can relay a message,” Andrew says. 

“Can you now?”

“What do you need him to know?” 

“Tell him that they’ve been here looking for him.” 

“Who’s they?”

“He will know,” Neil says.

“For my sake, then,” Andrew says. 

Neil seems amused by this. He puts his feet down from the desk and sits up straighter in the chair. 

“I’m surprised he hasn’t told you yet. Most of us are quite sweet on you.” 

“And you’re not?” 

Neil flicks his fingers in dismissal. Something about the gesture is stiff and fake. 

“You died before I ever got the chance to be.” 

The words were too honest, too soft, for who this Neil was trying to be, or who he had become in this world. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Andrew says, for no other reason than compulsion. He knew nothing except that it was the truth. 

Neil hides himself well. His face is blank, his body loose, but his eyes are hooded, and his pupils too blown. 

“Leave,” he says. “And tell him to stop jumping. Everything is coming apart.” 

“He has stopped.” 

Neil looks surprised at this. “Good for him. But they haven’t. And that’s his fault.” 

Andrew did not understand, so he says nothing. 

“Best to go now,” Neil says. 

“Okay,” Andrew says. And he goes. 

  
  


“You suck,” Andrew says at Neil trying and failing to cut a mango. 

“Then you try,” Neil says, annoyed but not really. 

Andrew takes the knife from Neil. He almost stabs himself three times, to Neil’s amusement, before Nicky makes an entrance into the kitchen. 

“You’re both awful,” he says, yawning. He steals the knife and gently hip checks Andrew out of the way. Andrew scowls but takes a seat at the counter beside Neil. 

“How are you feeling, Neil?” Nicky asks. 

“Fine,” Neil says. “Just a headache.” 

“Good,” Nicky says with a satisfied nod. “I can’t believe people sometimes.” 

“Yeah,” Neil says. 

“It’s lucky Andrew saw you.” 

“Yeah,” Neil says again. Nicky does not seem to notice his lacking in response. He contentedly continues the task at hand. 

“My mom and I used to fight over who got the pit,” Nicky says, neatly slicing cubes out of the mango and depositing them on a plate. “I always won. I think she let me.” 

“Probably,” Neil says, because he is an asshole and also threw up twice this morning. 

Nicky does not seem to mind. Maybe he was used to assholiness. 

“What about you?” He says. 

“What about me?” Neil says. 

“I don’t know. Do you have siblings? Parents?” 

Neil’s body stiffens. Only for a second but Andrew easily catches it. His shoulders relax quickly but in a practiced way, and he shrugs with the nonchalance of someone who had nothing interesting to say. 

“There’s not much to talk about,” he says. “They worked a lot.” 

“Where are they now?”

Nicky’s complete lack of tact had always been the bane of Andrew’s existence. Now he was instead grateful for it. 

Except that Neil lies. 

“My dad died a few years ago. My mom works overseas. We don’t communicate that often.” 

Andrew had no basis for knowing this was a lie. But he knew. 

“Oh,” Nicky says, and sets the knife down. “I’m so sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” Neil says, his smile easy and faux. 

“Mango?” Nicky offers in apology. 

“Thanks,” Neil says, and then eats the entire plate in a minute flat. 

There was a lot to ask and only so much dishonesty Andrew was willing to listen to. Neil would wiggle his way out of a few honest answers, maybe not for lack of trust anymore - at this point it was more likely just a force of habit. 

He waits for Neil to get back from his run, for him to shower and lay down on the bed, before he addresses him. 

“I jumped,” he says. 

Neil lifts his head up from the pillow and looks down at Andrew laying on the mattress beside his bed. 

“When?” 

“Last night,” he says. “While you were sleeping.” 

“Are you okay?” 

“I met another you,” Andrew says. 

“Oh,” Neil says. He sits up fully now. Andrew watches him carefully, but he gives nothing away. 

“He gave me a message to give to you.” 

“What was the message?” 

“He said to tell you they had been there looking. That you would know what it meant.” 

Neil is silent. He closes his eyes. His hands clench around the fabric of the sheets. 

“Hey,” Andrew says. “Come here.” 

Neil slides down from the bed onto Andrew’s mattress on the floor. Andrew sits up and across from him. He puts a hand up to his face. 

“Yes or no?” 

“Yes,” Neil says, and then leans into his open palm. 

Andrew traces the pattern exactly, as though it was there in front of him -- three slashes down one cheek, a swirl of burns on the other. Neil watches him with lidded eyes. 

“He had scars on his face,” Andrew says. “Someone had done that to him.” 

Neil shudders. Andrew pulls his hand away and it falls between them to rest. 

“Neil,” he says. “What’s the truth about your parents?” 

“My mom would have had me kill you by now,” Neil says. 

“Tell me about her,” Andrew says. 

Neil is quite for a long moment. 

“She spent her entire life trying to keep me safe,” he says finally. “I’m breaking every rule just being here.” 

“But you stayed anyway,” Andrew says. 

Neil nods. His hands shake so Andrew takes them in his own and holds them. 

“In some ways they made perfect sense,” he says. “She was brutal, too. Just better at hiding it. Their only difference was me. My mom chose to protect me. He didn’t.” 

“Your father,” Andrew understands. “He hurt you.” 

“Yes.” 

“So you ran,” Andrew says. “You’re still running.” 

Neil squeezes Andrew’s hands. 

“I’ve jumped so many times trying to get away from him, sometimes I can’t remember what’s from my own timeline and what’s not. I don’t remember what you have told me or what I just already know. I’m tired, Andrew.” 

Andrew understood tiredness. This was the bone-deep sort. Where to move was through syrup. To speak was through stitched lips. To breathe was through the thickest smoke. 

“So stop running,” he says. 

As though it were that easy. As though he hasn’t already. And was not risking everything for it. 

Maybe they could stay in this house forever and his father would not find him. They could drink rainwater and snow. They could live off each other. 

“I want to,” Neil says. 

But to want something meant nothing in this world. It meant nothing in every version of it. And they both knew it. 


	2. ii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I mean,” Neil says. “That I like when someone is going the speed limit and you get all grumpy about it. And when you pout because they forgot the extra pump of syrup in your drink. And when Nicky puts the AC on and you get cold and bitter even though it’s the middle of summer.” 
> 
> “You like when I’m upset,” Andrew says. 
> 
> “No,” Neil says. “I like it when you show you feel something. I know your family doesn't think you do. But I know better."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> are they too soft? probably. but we deserve it don't we? did i perhaps get a bit lazy with the plot? yes. but it was loads of fun!
> 
> as always thank u for reading <3 
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS!!: suicide, suicidal ideation, drug use & abuse, violence (including blood, knives, guns), death, major character death (but not exactly?) 
> 
> hmu @petalloso.tumblr.com with any questions

He leaves in the night. 

Andrew wonders, watching him slip out of bed, if he’s stupid or just desperate, to think that Andrew wouldn’t wake to his leaving, wouldn’t have been lying awake to begin with. 

He is silent as a ghost. Andrew will give him that. His feet step so lightly and he holds his duffel close to his body so it does not swing and accidentally bump something. Andrew watches through lashes as Neil slowly turns the knob and opens the door just enough to slip through, and then releases the knob on the other side, carefully so as not to make a sound. 

And then Andrew kicks the blanket off his mattress and stands. And he waits ten seconds by the door. And he follows. 

Neil moves quickly, and is already out the front door by the time Andrew has made it down the stairs. Andrew does not bother slipping on shoes. His feet step bare and cold on the driveway. He keeps following. 

Neil stops a block down the sidewalk. He is cast only in the streetlamp light, dim orange shone over a dark silhouette, shadow long and warped against the pavement. His back is to Andrew. His shoulders are slumped in something like defeat. 

“I thought you were asleep,” he says, not yet turning so his voice sounds still far away. 

“You should have checked my breathing first,” Andrew says. 

Neil turns to him. His hair has gotten so long. It falls into his eyes so Andrew cannot see the look in them. He wonders if he bothered to put in his contacts before leaving, but from this distance cannot tell. 

“You check breathing for dying people, Andrew,” Neil says, seemingly offended by the suggestion. “Why are you following me?” 

“Because you want to be chased.” 

“Don’t be an asshole,” Neil says. 

“Don’t leave then.” 

“Are you asking me to stay?” Neil says, as though Andrew’s answer to such a question might make any difference. He doesn’t know what he hears in Neil’s voice – it was not hope, not yearning, perhaps curiosity, or something of a cousin to it. 

“I was warned about you,” Andrew says rather than giving Neil an answer to his question. “Before I knew what it meant. He told me that if you ran not to let you.” 

“And do you trust yourself?” Neil says, guessing the nature of the person who had warned him, because it could be no one else, and because Neil always surprised him with his perceptiveness. 

“I _only_ trust myself.” 

“You don’t trust me,” Neil says. It was not an accusation. He says it more as an observation, with little feeling. Andrew does not bother to correct him. He does not have the energy to. And it was safer to pretend this was the truth, less like lying and more like omission for self preservation. 

“You don’t bother to tell me you are leaving,” Andrew points out, taking a step closer to Neil, who inches towards him in response. “Or why. So how could I?” 

“I’m hard of hearing, Andrew. Not stupid. I know what Aaron thinks of me. Nicky has a hard enough time paying the bills without me around. And you–” 

“What?” 

“You’re not safe around me..” 

Andrew almost laughs. The notion, though not strictly untrue, was irrelevant, a baseless argument for Neil’s selfish decision. He might say as much, but it took too many words and he was afraid he would instead say something he did not yet mean to. 

“Don’t pretend that’s why you’re running away.” 

“You don’t know anything.” 

“I know you’re lying,” Andrew says, with more heat than intended. “You don’t give a shit what Aaron thinks because he’s an asshole. Nicky loves you, for reasons he articulates to me almost constantly. Even so don’t pretend you haven’t slipped hundred dollar bills into his wallet when he’s not looking. And you stand here and pretend you’re leaving for my safety and not because you’re afraid. Your martyrdom is misplaced. I don’t care about your past or that it will catch up to you. And I don’t need you to tell me what’s not safe for me like I’m some moron you need to protect.” 

“It’s not martyrdom,” Neil says. “And what’s so terrible about caring that you stay alive? You’re always pretending that you don’t care about anything, but the only thing you don’t care about is yourself. So why can’t I make up for it?” 

“By leaving?” 

“You don’t get it. They’ll kill you but not before they make you beg for it. And it will be my fault. You have to let me go.” 

“No.” 

“What does it matter to you?” Neil says, and his voice breaks and Andrew all at once wants to punch him for that question and tug him close to hold him in answer. 

“How many different universes have you been to and you still have no idea?” 

“I don’t do that anymore.” 

“Then where are you going?” 

“Just let me go,” Neil says rather than answering, but this time it sounds less like a demand and more like a plea, more like he wants for Andrew to stop him but also could not stand for him to. His hands are clenched in fists. Andrew knows then what he will do. He wraps both hands around both Neil’s wrists. 

He feels that something is wrong immediately. His body is pulled in too many directions, as though it could not choose into which it wanted to go, and though it had always been painful this pain is debilitating. 

When he opens his eyes it is still night and they are still on the sidewalk in their neighborhood a block down from the house. They are both on their knees. Andrew releases his grip on Neil’s hands and resists the urge to tear his fingers off for having put them their without asking. But Neil reaches for him as he pulls away and hovers his hands over like a question and Andrew holds them again. 

“Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” he says. “You?” 

“Yeah,” Neil says, looking around distractedly. “We’re too far.” 

Andrew felt the pulling in his stomach that meant they should leave. Behind his eyes he ached, something pressing from inside into his skull, trying to escape. Worse his arms stung beneath his sleeves. He had not put his bands on before following Neil. 

“Then let’s leave,” he says. 

“We should find out what’s here first,” Neil says. This surprises him. Nel would not willfully walk into something unknown, something that could be dangerous. Maybe his curiosity outweighed his survival streak. Or maybe he knew something Andrew didn’t.

“Fine,” he says. Neil pays little mind to the seeming apathy in his response. Perhaps because he knew better. 

He tugs Neil up from the ground and they walk down the block, up the driveway, and back into the house. 

It is too empty. Nicky’s pictures are gone from the walls, which are instead bare and painted a white that looked more like yellow. The curtains were yellow instead of blue. Nicky’s plants were dead and had been dead for a long time. Andrew skips the creaky stair only for the next to squeak instead. 

“What are we doing here?” 

“Just looking around,” Neil says. 

Right. Looking around. Andrew snorts and then almost falls down the stairs when Neil falls on top of him. 

He catches him easily despite the surprise. They fall anyway but with more control. Neil is on his knees and groans in pain, holding his face as though it has been hit. Andrew blocks the next blow with his forearms, grabs the weapon, which is apparently a book, and uses it to slam the attacker backwards. 

The attacker yells something profane but goes easily. He lifts his arms to protect himself but Andrew does not throw another blow. Because it is Aaron. Skinnier, paler, somehow more miserable, Aaron. 

“Andrew,” he says, and his voice breaks in such an odd way Andrew might suspect him an imposter. Except he knows that wide-eyed vulnerability. The darkness of his blown pupils, the color purple in the in-between of his elbows. 

“Aaron.” 

Aaron shakes his head, eyes wide, and presses both hands to the side of his face. “What the fuck did I take?” 

“You’re high,” Andrew says. He has not seen Aaron this way since high school. 

“God, you sound just like him,” Aaron says, looking up with fear in his face. “This can’t be happening.” 

“Andrew,” Neil says from where he is still on the floor. 

“Wait,” Andrew says to Neil, and then addresses Aaron. 

“It’s only me,” he says. “I won’t hurt you.” 

“You’re lying,” Aaron says. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“You’re _dead,”_ he says, and then repeats it, over and over again while Andrew can only stand there and listen. The words are for himself, a reassurance, an insistence that what he is seeing cannot be real and that he is only imagining it. This could not be real. 

“I messed up,” Neil says, looking from Andrew and back to Aaron desperately. “We need to go. I shouldn’t have brought us here.” 

His arms ache. The bone-deep kind of ache. His flesh is splitting from the inside out. He is afraid to look down so he looks at Aaron even though his arms are warm and wet and the carpet must be staining with red. 

“You’re dead,” Aaron says for the last time, looking up at Andrew, his face wet and his eyes afraid. “You killed yourself.” 

“I made a promise to you,” Andrew says. 

“You broke it!” Aaron sobs. 

“Then you misunderstood,” Andrew says, but he does not know if that is true anymore. 

“Go away,” Aaron says. “Please go away.” 

But if this were true than everything Andrew thought of himself was a lie. He made promises to break them. He had broken the most important one. 

“Andrew,” Neil says. “We need to go.” 

“He’s high,” Andrew says, looking down at his brother’s huddled form, his shoulders wracking and his body shaking. “We can’t leave him.” 

“There’s nothing we can do for him. He’s safest here at home.” 

He knew Neil was right. When Aaron finally came down he would think Andrew a drug-induced hallucination, something manifested from guilt, from grief. Aaron was grieving. This surprises Andrew. More surprising is how it feels to see him this way. 

“Okay,” Andrew says, because the tugging inside him is stronger than anything, stronger than his promises, stronger than how badly he wants to stay here, to prove Aaron wrong, to take care of him. 

He does not think about how leaving now was breaking his promise one last time after death. 

  
  


“Andrew,” Neil says first. 

“Don’t,” Andrew says. Back in the bedroom, in their own universe, he has made his way to the bathroom and is rinsing his arms in the sink. The whole thing reminds him of that morning weeks ago, how the porcelain stained, how his arms hurt, how nothing made sense. Except this time Neil is here, and for some reason Andrew could not stand him to be away even as the blood rinsed away to leave his arms exposed and his scars unmistakable. 

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Neil says. He passes Andrew a towel, which he takes to dry his arms off. 

“You’re lying, Neil. That’s what you do.” 

The look of hurt on his face passes fleetingly. “I’ve never lied to you,” he says. 

Andrew was tempted to call that a lie, too, but Neil was an open book and Andrew had memorized every word. Maybe in another universe the accusation rang true, and maybe that was why Andrew felt the need to say it to begin with, but not here. 

He turns away from Neil and heads to the window, pulling it open and perching on the sill. The flame of his lighter flickers along with the trembling of his fingers. Though there is little space to be spared Neil sits across from him and Andrew does not stop him. 

“I’m sorry,” Neil says eventually. 

“Don’t be,” Andrew says. He would like to say that it was not his fault, that instead it was his own. But he was not selfless enough for that. Neil was easy to blame and that made it worse that Andrew was even tempted to. Andrew passes him his cigarette. He takes it, just as he always does. His fingertips graze Andrew’s own. 

Neil was perhaps the most unchanging thing in his life. Andrew could recognize the irony. He was one huge secret, bundled up in a mess of scars and disguises and accents and odd habits that left him wary everywhere he went. But in every universe he was still the most steady thing about Andrew. 

“Did you know?” 

“Know?” 

“My arms bled when we first met,” Andrew says. “Did you know?” 

Neil takes a drag and holds it in his lungs too long. When he exhales he coughs. He looks at Andrew. It is not pity in his eyes. Not sadness or grief or disgust. It is understanding. 

“No,” he says. “I didn’t know.” 

He thinks about the scars on Neil’s body. There are so many more he has not seen. Many more he has not even gotten yet. They are none of them self inflicted but somehow Neil still understands. Andrew thinks about his hearing aids. His face that is scarred in other worlds but the only part of him here that remains unmarked by violence. His hands, how quickly and fluidly they move when he signs something, how they slow when he notices Andrew struggling to keep up. 

“I was dead,” he remembers. Not only dead. He had killed himself. It seemed an impossible thing but when he was a child he would sometimes entertain it, tossing it around like a cheap bouncy ball, thinking of the idea often but only ever in a vague and hypothetical sense, as he thought most people did when looking over the railing of a tall building or when walking over a bridge. And maybe in another world it had been less hypothetical and had followed him along even after the worst of his hurt had passed, something omnipresent, something taunting. He could not stand the thought. But he understood it. 

Neil nods and then gestures to Andrew’s arms. “Do they hurt?”

“Sometimes.” 

“They shouldn’t,” Neil says, passing the cigarette back. “My mom always said that if you couldn’t find the source of your pain than it wasn’t actually yours at all.” 

“Why did you lose your hearing?” Andrew asks. Perhaps it sounded like a non sequitur, but Neil does not act as though it does, only hums as though he saw the question coming and had already thought of his answer. 

“I don’t know.” 

“Have you ever thought about finding out?” 

“I don’t think it’s a good story.” 

Andrew could not disagree. He leans over and stubs the cigarette out on a roof tile. They sit in silence for a long time before Neil speaks again. 

“I’ll teach you how,” he says. 

Andrew is surprised by his lack of satisfaction. “Why now?” 

“Because it would do more harm now not to.” 

“So you’re staying.” 

“I’m staying.” 

“What changed your mind?” 

“You.” 

“To keep me safe,” Andrew says. Neil must hear the scorn in his voice. 

“What’s so wrong about that?” 

Figures. One minute Neil believed adamantly it was safer for Andrew if he left, and the next safer for him if he stayed. He hated the very idea of being protected but if it kept Neil with him maybe he could stand to accept it a little.

“Anyway,” Neil says. “Lately something hasn’t been right. The fact that you have those scars and they’re hurting you. And you keep waking up somewhere other than where you fell asleep. And my headaches. So I’m staying.” 

“Headaches?” 

“It’s fine,” Neil says dismissively. “It’s just altogether a bit odd.” 

“Cryptic,” Andrew says. Neil smiles, shoos Andrew’s fingers out of the way, and closes the window. 

  
  
  
  


“Why must we drive into the middle of nowhere for this?” 

“Because if someone sees you disappear out of thin air they might ask questions about it.” 

“Fair enough,” Andrew says and then swats at Neil. “Get your feet off the dashboard.” 

Neil lowers his feet and then proceeds to sit cross legged on his seat instead. Andrew could not understand how it was comfortable but Neil looked content. Neil grabs his drink from the cupholder and takes a sip. 

“This tastes awful,” he says with a grimace, and then takes another sip. 

“You have terrible taste.” 

Neil laughs and then spills some of it onto his chest. He tries to rub it off with his fingers but instead only manages to spread it around and make it worse. Andrew hands him a napkin. 

“Do you have to drive like a maniac?” 

“This is how I normally drive.” 

Neil accepts that in silence. 

When they arrive Neil is first out of the car. He has driven them to a cemetery. A morbid place, but he supposed it was less frequented than elsewhere, particularly at one o’ clock in the morning. 

They walk down a pathway, past the gravestones and into a canopy of trees surrounding the area. Neil stops and turns to Andrew. 

“We can only have this lesson once,” he says. “And you can only use the ability if you absolutely must. Going to other universes too often will confuse your mind and your body.” 

“Okay,” Andrew agrees. 

“Okay,” Neil says, and then takes a heavy breath and sits down in the dirt. Andrew seats himself in front of him. 

“There are infinite universes,” Neil begins. “And infinite versions of you. My mother described each as a consequence of a decision you’ve made that was different from what you _could_ have done. She said, in order to control it, think of a recent choice you made, and what you would have done otherwise.

It’s easiest to jump to a universe that was created by a choice closest to what this version of you would have done. But if you think too hard about what is possible but what scares you, you will go there instead. That’s why it’s dangerous. Are you okay to try?” 

“Yes,” Andrew said. 

“Okay. What’s something you could have done differently? You’re going to feel something pulling at your body. You should let it.” 

He closes his eyes. He lets it pull him. He thinks about what he could have done differently. The choices seemed endless, which only served to make it harder. He opens his eyes. 

This was not where he meant to be. There is Neil. He is younger. A child no older than ten. His eyes are the correct color but his hair is blond and mussed from sleep. He looks from Andrew to someone sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag and then back again. And then he pulls a gun out from underneath his pillow and points it at him. 

Andrew closes his eyes. He thinks of his version of Neil. He opens his eyes. 

“How was it?” 

“Fuck you,” Andrew says. He doesn’t mean it. “Why do I keep meeting versions of you as much as myself?” 

Neil looks away, as though he knew the answer but did not want to say it. 

“Neil,” Andrew prompts. 

“It’s not unusual for people with the same ability to meet each other again and again.” 

“So we’re linked,” Andrew says, which sounded stupid in his head and sounded stupider out loud. 

“Not necessarily,” Neil says. “But it’s not unlikely. We most likely meet in almost every universe that exists.” 

“And why does it hurt so much going but less coming back?” 

“Because you’re not supposed to be there in the first place.” 

Andrew gathers dirt in his hands and then drops it over Neil’s lap. Neil brushes it away. 

“Why do you wear those?” He says, pointing at his eyes as he looks at Andrew. “They are obviously fake.” 

Neil frowns. “I should point out you’re the only person who’s ever noticed them.” 

“They’re awful.” 

“I didn’t think you cared.” 

“I don’t.”

“You’re acting like you do.” 

“Fine. I do. They’re a lie.” 

“They’re necessary.” 

“Not here.” 

“I can’t take that chance.” 

“Then when you’re home.” 

“Okay,” Neil says, easily, as though he were waiting for the request just so he could agree to it. 

“Okay.” 

“Okay,” Neil says. “I’ll take them off when I’m home.” 

Home, he says. A word with so little meaning except to them perhaps it meant more than it did to anyone else. If he thought about it for just a moment he could understand why so many people were obsessed with the notion. Why people wrote stories about searching for it. 

Home. It was Neil in his bed, sleeping with his mouth open and the sheets kicked out from under him. It was Neil in the morning after his run, sweaty and content. Home was grocery shopping, Neil asking him to buy him alcohol for the purpose of disinfecting wounds as though that were a perfectly acceptable thing to say. 

Home was Neil. Who always had the seat warmer on, vying for warmth as though if were a luxury he had been afforded and could not allow to go to waste. When Andrew had to unexpectedly hit the brakes his arm would go out in front of Neil and Neil would look at him with something in his expression he could not yet recognize. 

He always took the long way home, windows down, sky darkening, the smell of summer billowing around them and Neil’s hair knotting in the wind but he sticks his head out anyway. Andrew will remind him he won’t pick his splattered body up off the pavement if he goes out the window. But he only ever laughs and the sound gets caught in the wind and in his heart and in his stomach. 

Home. 

“Let’s go home, then,” Andrew says. Because though this lesson is over and won’t ever be taught again, he doesn’t need it. He is just fine here. Despite everything else. 

Neil smiles, a little sad and a little happy. “Let’s go home.” 

  
  
  


He arrives at his shift sleep deprived and annoyed the next evening. Roland shoots him a smile that means to be charming. Andrew ignores him to get started on the dishes in back. 

“Hey,” Roland says, appearing out of nowhere at the end of Andrew’s shift. 

“What do you want?” 

“What makes you think I want something?”

“You would not be talking to me otherwise.” 

Roland is too smart to take that as an offense and too smart to deny it. “You think too lowly of me,” he says with a smile. “I just wanted to see how that boy of yours was doing.”

“Boy?” Andrew says, swinging a dishrag over his shoulder. 

“Yeah,” Roland says. “He seemed sweet.”

“He’s fine,” Andrew says, moving to collect his things to leave. Roland follows him. 

“What’s his name?” 

“Why are you asking?” 

“Dunno,” Roland says with a nonchalant shrug. “He just seemed sort of special to you.” 

Andrew turns to look at him, keys in hand and sweater slung over his arm. 

“Tread lightly.” 

“Okay, okay,” Roland says. “I just haven’t seen you in a while, and I meant to say after that night that I was happy for you, but it seemed insensitive after what happened, so I waited and instead I’m saying it now. And also, like, I wanted to make sure our arrangement was ended, just to keep things, you know, clear.” 

“It’s ended,” Andrew says. “And Neil is not what you’re thinking.” 

“Sure,” Roland says. 

“I’m serious. Don’t ask about him again.” 

“Okay,” Roland says. 

Andrew moves to leave. He is just about to walk out the door when Roland calls out after him once more. 

“Thanks for a good time,” Roland says. “I’d blow you a kiss but I know you’d decapitate me.” 

He wouldn’t resort to such drasticity. It takes Andrew a moment to decide what instead to respond with. He chooses to give Roland a simple nod. 

“See you tomorrow.” 

  
  


When he arrives home it is late and his family is asleep. Except for Neil. He hears a clatter in the bathroom and a low mumbled curse. The door is open when he goes to investigate. 

“What are you doing?”

Rather than give Andrew a proper response, Neil puts down the brush in his hand and says rather pleadingly, “can you help me?”

Andrew takes a moment to assess and contemplate, watching Neil watch him in his reflection, one small tuft of hair sopping wet with dye and falling dramatically into his face to stain his forehead brown. 

“Okay,” he says finally, and Neil gives him a small and grateful smile. Andrew very suddenly wants to wipe that smile away, preferably with his own mouth, and it seemed more and more lately they’d been inching towards something of that sort, so he could imagine it easily. But he won’t make the first move and he doesn’t know why. Something keeps him from it, some hand at his elbow, a gentle but firm grip holding him back. 

“These instructions make no sense,” he says after reading the back of the packaging. 

“Hence why I need help.” 

“All those years disguising yourself and you still can’t dye your own hair?” 

Neil takes too long to respond. Andrew braces himself automatically. “My mother usually did it for me.” 

“Oh,” Andrew says. He does not ask for elaboration but Neil offers it willingly. 

“I didn’t even notice,” he says. “By the time I did it was too late and she wouldn’t let me take her to a hospital. She died by the ocean.” 

“Do you miss her?” 

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Neil says and then lets out a huff of exasperated breath. Andrew gets to work with his hair, pinning back everything with Neil’s black plastic clips except one small and manageable lock and then painting it with brown dye. 

“She kept me safe for years,” Neil says after a moment. “Sometimes I made it harder for her and there would be consequences.” 

“Neil. You don’t have to talk about this,” Andrew says. 

“I want to,” Neil says, and Andrew knew every inflection of his voice so well now, he knew this was honesty. This was not reassurance for Andrew’s sake. It was not forced truth. 

“If my accent slipped she would scold me and then make sure it never happened again,” Neil goes on. “But there was never a mark where someone could see. It would draw too much attention. I kissed a girl once. I don’t know how she found out. It wasn’t worth it.” 

“She beat you,” Andrew says, not shocked by the revelation but feeling something like heat in his stomach. 

“Always for good reason.” 

“Do not justify her actions, Neil. There is never a good reason to hit a child. You did not deserve it. You will never deserve it.” 

Neil closes his eyes like he is in pain to hear it. Andrew finishes dying the rest of his hair in silence. When he is done he runs his fingers through the dye-soaked hair. Neil hums. Andrew pulls his hands away and they fall to his sides, stained with brown like mud. 

“Thank you,” Neil says. 

“What for?” 

“Dunno. For everything.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Andrew says. Neil only smiles that knowing smile, and tilts his head to the side, looking at Andrew in his reflection. His eyes crinkle with his smile, a single dimple on one cheek, his hair looking like mud. He is ridiculous and gorgeous and Andrew wants to pick him up and put him on the counter and himself between his spread legs and kiss him. He knew Neil would let him. But still he cannot ask. 

“Isn't that my trademark?” Neil says. 

“Your trademark is stupidity.” 

Neil laughs. “That’s fair.” 

He leaves Neil to wash his hair out. 

  
  


On Friday he announces to his family they will be going out. 

He decides this rather spontaneously. Something about his conversation with Roland spurs him to, although if he were asked to explain the rationale, which in itself was lacking, he could not. And besides, Nicky needed something to distract him from being away from Erik on his birthday, Aaron was in dire need of something to remove the stick that was perpetually up his ass, and Andrew craved a drink that would cost him at least an hour’s minimum wage. 

While Neil and Aaron are upstairs getting ready, Andrew waits in the kitchen with Nicky, who is using a small compact mirror to check his face and which he has not put down in five minutes. Finally, he snaps it shut rather dramatically and turns to Andrew in his seat. 

“I had the weirdest dream last night,” he says, unprompted as typically occurs when he addresses Andrew. “Actually it was more like a nightmare. I was still living with my parents. Except they were nice. Were our curtains always yellow?” 

Andrew turns to where he is indicating. 

“Did you not buy new ones?” 

“Did I?” Nicky says, and then shrugs the question away. “Anyway, what’s up with you and Neil?” 

“Nothing.” 

Nicky smiles his knowing smile. It is softer than usual though. Andrew looks away like that will stop Nicky from continuing to speak. As per usual, it does not work. 

“Sure,” he says. “I totally believe you.” 

“Don’t test me, Nicky.” 

“Okay, fine,” he says, his hands up as though to fend off a wild animal. And for the first time since Nicky adopted them Andrew contemplates what he must think of him, if he thought him violent, if he thought him unfeeling, and if so why he bothered to take them in like he had. 

“Hey,” Nicky says before Andrew can get up and leave, his voice soft and like an apology. “Aaron told me not to tell you but I found some cracker dust wrappers in his room while I was cleaning out the other day. Like, a lot of it. And I asked him about it but he said it was old.” 

“What makes you think I care what Aaron is doing?” 

Nicky looks unaffected by the question. Perhaps he had grown used to Andrew’s seeming apathy. Or maybe he saw right through it all along. He says nothing of it, only grabs the car keys from the counter in front of Andrew and makes his way out the door. 

“I’ll start the car,” he says. 

Andrew lets him leave. 

  
  


Nicky and Aaron leave after the first round. Andrew leaves them to their own devices for now, having warned both Nicky and Neil to let him know if they saw Aaron sneaking off somewhere they did not know. Neil stands with him as he orders a second round for them, and when he offers him a shot, he takes it this time. Andrew raises his brows. Neil simply shrugs. 

“Are you going to dance?” He signs, because to sign was easier than shouting over the noise. 

“If you come with me,” Neil signs. 

“No.” 

“Why not?” 

“I’m comfortable here.” 

“Neil!” Nicky shouts, appearing from the crowd and practically falling onto Neil in his excitement. “Come dance with me.” 

“Uh,” Neil starts. 

“C’mon,” Nicky whines. “Neither of the party pooper twins ever dance with me, and I’m tired of dancing with strangers. Come dance with me.” 

Something in Neil’s face softens. Maybe he’s a lightweight and it’s the shot. Or maybe it’s Nicky’s child-like expression, his hands gripping tightly to Neil’s. Andrew has to look away. 

“Okay,” Neil says. He lets Nicky drag him onto the floor with him, turning to give Andrew a wave before he disappears into the crowd. 

Andrew takes another shot. 

It does not take him long to grow bored with watching the mess of sweaty people. He thinks about finding Roland but axes the thought quickly. He thinks about ordering another two shots but he does not trust Aaron enough given what Nicky had told him. After half an hour he walks around the exterior of the dancefloor in search of Neil to steal away for company. 

Neil sees him first, at the edge of the crowd, waving to him like he has been doing so for a while. He is too far to hear so Andrew signs to him instead. Neil ignores him to say something else. 

“Saw Aaron leave with someone,” he signs. “Towards bathroom.” 

Andrew signs that he has understood the message and makes his way to the bathroom. 

He is not quiet in his entrance but Aaron does not immediately notice him. He is bent over the sink, one finger pressed to his right nostril and a line at the edge of the sink in front of him. Andrew shoves him and blows hard to get rid of it. It looks like powdered sugar in the air. 

“What the _fuck_?” Aaron says. And then he tackles Andrew. 

Or he tries to. Andrew grips him by his back and attempts to pry him off, but in his seeming fury he has something of a herculean strength as compared to his usual self. It takes Andrew some effort and a little bit of hair pulling to finally get him off, and only after Aaron has bit him in the hip. Andrew punches him in the face. 

“Shit,” Aaron hisses, stepping back and cupping one hand over his eye, all the fury dissipating from him in a second. “That really hurt. What’s your fucking deal?” 

“What is yours?” Andrew says. He rubs a hand over the spot where Aaron bit him. A ridiculous and outrageously unfair move on his part. 

“It’s none of your business,” Aaron says, moving to leave. Andrew puts a hand on his shoulder and shoves him backwards. He stumbles badly. Andrew cannot tell if he’s also high or only drunk. 

“It is when we made a deal.” 

“Like you care about keeping your word.” 

“You’re an idiot for thinking I don’t. Don’t lie to me. The floor is covered in your fucking coke.” 

“Fine,” Aaron says. “What do you want me to say? That I haven’t wanted to use this badly since I was sixteen? That I thought this was a better option than the alternative? That I spent my entire last paycheck on what you just fucking wasted?” 

“I told you to tell me if this was happening again.” 

“When do you ever tell me anything?” Aaron says, as though he cared and was not simply using the accusation as ammunition, as though it were the same thing. “A deal goes two ways, Andrew. I stick with you, you stick with me, we tell each other when something is wrong. So when are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on? Nicky keeps waking up crying, your boyfriend, who definitely is against the fucking rules if I might add, has like, four different fucking accents, suddently I’m an addict again.” 

“Then let me help you,” Andrew says, because it is the only part of everything Aaron has just said that he knows what to do anything about, and because he would rather pretend he had not heard anything else at all. 

“You can’t,” Aaron says, and his voice breaks and Andrew is brought back to a place he never wanted to be again. “Why do you even want yo?” 

“I don’t,” he lies. “I’m keeping my promise.” 

Aaron shakes his head. “I thought you didn’t care for years. But you were pretending, weren’t you? And ever since that tiny mophead showed up it’s been like you actually have a soul.” 

“Nice,” Andrew says. 

“Whatever,” Aaron says, and then sways. The skin around his eye is red and will blacken, Andrew knows, because it is not the first time he has punched Aaron in the face there. 

“How drunk are you?” 

“I’m not drunk,” Aaron says. 

“Don’t throw up.” 

“If I did it would be on you.” 

“Then really don’t throw up.” 

Aaron smiles bitterly. And then he throws up. 

  
  


He takes his family home. 

Nicky tries to make conversation in the car but the only one of them who indulges him is Neil, and only barely. He gives up eventually. Andrew rolls down all the windows so the wind will drown out the silence. 

Aaron goes immediately to his room. Nicky says goodnight, takes off his pants, and promptly falls asleep on the couch. Andrew drinks a glass of water, refills it, and places it in front of Aaron’s door on the way to his room, Neil following behind him. 

“Is he okay?” Neil asks once he is showered and in bed. His newly dyed hair had stained the pillow case the night before and so he had laid out a towel to put his head on instead. Right now though he is seated on Andrew’s mattress on the floor, teaching him all the best parts of a man to go for so they died the most quickly. A kitchen knife serves as his prop. 

“He’ll be fine,” Andrew says, because he would make certain of it. He takes the knife from Neil to demonstrate what he has learned. Neil nods, satisfied with the location he has chosen, and then takes the knife from Andrew and sets it on the bedside table, leaning over Andrew to reach it before settling back down again. 

“Are _you_ okay?” 

“I’m okay,” Andrew says, softer than he means to. Neil watches him, searching for honesty. He seems to find it, because he smiles a small thing and tilts his head to the side and looks at Andrew that way for so long a moment Andrew almost leans forward to close the space between them. The distance was little. It would be so easy. Neil blinks and Andrew’s brain stutters and restarts. 

“Are you crying?” Andrew says, because Neil’s lashes are wet and his eyes are glassy. Neil looks surprised, and wipes at his eyes with the palm of his eyes. He laughs softly. 

“This reminds me of something my mom told me when I was little. It was before I even knew what it really meant.” 

Andrew hums for him to go on. He sniffles, a side effect of crying eyes, and laughs again. 

“She said that if you started crying but you weren’t sad and there was not an eyelash in your eye than somewhere in another universe you were crying. And if you heard someone call your name but you were alone than someone had called to you in another universe. And if you were hurting and you didn’t know why it was because another version of you was in pain. And he was sharing it with you because he couldn’t bear it by himself.” 

“Sounds like an excuse to ignore what you’re feeling.” 

“Maybe,” Neil says, his face a little splotchy from crying but his smile its complete opposite. “But imagine everything that has ever happened to you, everything you’ve ever felt, happening an infinite amount of ways but all fundamentally similar. No wonder people spontaneously combust.” 

“There’s a scientific explanation for spontaneous human combustion.” 

“Of course you would know that,” Neil says, but he doesn’t sound annoyed but instead fond. “You know when I first saw you after you ran me over the first thing I thought was that you were an uncaring asshole.” 

“Ditto.” 

“I _am_ an asshole,” Neil says. “There’s a difference between actually being an asshole and just pretending to be.” 

“I have no idea what you’re getting at here.” 

“I mean,” Neil says, and though he usually has no qualms about looking Andrew in the face he does not look at him now. “That I like when someone is going the speed limit and you get all grumpy about it. And when you pout because they forgot the extra pump of syrup in your drink. And when Nicky puts the AC on and you get all cold and bitter even though it’s the middle of summer.” 

“You like when I’m angry,” Andrew says. 

“No,” Neil says, looking up now. He has taken out his contacts. His eyes are like pools, his lashes wet from tears that were not his own but belonged instead to another version of him, his cheeks pink but surely not from a hot shower after this long.. “I like it when you show you feel something. I know they don’t think you do. But I know better.”

“Don’t be stupid.” 

“It’s not stupid. You do care,” Neil says. “I can tell. I know you.” 

“You don’t know shit.” 

“I know you, Andrew.” 

“Shut up,” Andrew says. 

“No,” Neil says, and now he is smiling and Andrew is thinking of nothing except putting his mouth to him. And he is thinking how odd that they have seemed to close the space between them without even noticing, and how the summer sun has freckled Neil’s nose, and how Neil can’t look away from his lips, and how the whole thing seemed like a long time coming. 

“Neil.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yes or no?” 

“Yes,” Neil breathes, and the word is caught between their mouths when Andrew kisses him. 

His fingers are in Neil’s hair and his palm against the side of his neck, a spot Neil told him only ten minutes ago a man would bleed out from in less than five minutes. He thinks of what it meant that Neil was here. 

He trusted Neil. He had trusted him in every universe and so though it was a hard thing to do it was the easiest choice he had made in a long time. And in every universe he had been hunted and hurt and still Neil trusted him back, with his mouth open and his lips soft, his body warm in Andrew’s hoodie, staying when time and time again he had wanted to run. 

Andrew breaks the kiss and Neil follows him, his eyes closed, stopping just a breath away from Andrew. He opens his eyes, a question in them. 

“Tell me to stop,” Andrew says. 

“If I need to I will,” Neil says. Because he knew what it meant even without Andrew telling him. 

He lowers Neil onto his back and follows him down, presses him into the mattress with his own weight and feels Neil arch into him. His hands rest beside him, fingers clenching the sheets.. Andrew takes them both and threads his fingers through and holds them above their heads. His arms are useless to hold him up that way but he didn’t need them to. 

He leans down, teases Neil with a feather light touch of his lips, finds himself smiling when Neil feigns annoyance but does not close the gap himself. “Andrew,” he says, breathless, his hair splayed behind him, his cheeks rosied. He liked Neil this way, clingy, wanting, enough that he almost kisses him but not quite yet. 

“Yeah?” 

“C’mon,” Neil says. 

“C’mon what?” 

“Kiss me.” 

“So demanding.” 

Neil smiles. He means it to be sly but it comes out sweeter. Andrew has not seen that look in his eyes before and he almost has to look away from it. “You love it,” Neil says. 

Andrew says nothing. He coaxes Neil’s mouth open with his own, so softly, and Neil hums and Andrew kisses him harder. One hand moves to touch the skin underneath the hem of his sweater. Neil makes a lovely sound. Andrew breaks away once more to look at him, his eyes half-lidded, and Neil kisses his neck in response and his spine tingles and if he knew it was going to be like this maybe he would have prepared himself better but he hadn’t, and he didn’t, and he couldn't have imagined it anyway. 

Afterwards they lay facing each other, sleepy and sore-mouthed, speaking softly and every now and again bridging the small space between them for a wayward kiss. 

“Your lashes are a different color from your hair,” Andrew says. They are long and auburn, and when Neil closes his eyes this close they tickle the skin on Andrew’s cheek. 

“You can’t tell from afar.” 

“I can tell.” 

“Should I dye them then?” 

“That would be ridiculous,” Andrew says, and presses a kiss to his cheekbone. 

“Would you do it for me?” Neil goes on. “You did such a good job the first time.” 

Andrew pulls the drawstrings to Neil’s hoodie so the whole hood pinches around his face. Neil makes an affronted sound. Andrew kisses the only part of his face that still shows. “I will not.” 

Neil laughs. He could not see anything with the fabric in his eyes so his hands search carefully before settling on both sides of Andrew’s face, fingertips in his hair. 

“No one will ever be close enough to tell except you,” he says, like that was a perfectly normal thing to say, like it didn’t make Andrew’s stomach twist inside of him. Andrew pulls the hoodie off his head. 

He could think of nothing to say. Neil does not look as though he is expecting an answer. Andrew traces the hard plastic of his hearing aids wrapped around his ear until Neil kisses his palm, switches them off, and takes them out. He sets them on the bedside table, beside the knife they had been using for Neil’s lesson, and Andrew think distantly of what sort of violence had taken his hearing, what kind of people they must be to have hurt him so that he ran and kept running until he had stopped, here, with Andrew. 

“How long will you stay?” He signs. 

“As long as I can,” Neil signs back. 

He falls asleep thinking of it.

  
  


If he did not pay careful attention, it was easiest to assume most everything after that night remained largely unchanged. But he paid attention. And though the differences were subtle they were there still. 

Neil more and more often sleeps without his hearing aids in and on Andrew’s mattress more often than his own, although at some point Andrew might suggest they simply both move back to the bed. He offers to water Nicky’s plants and Nicky in his excitation creates a color-coded schedule, assigning to their dismay both Andrew and Aaron to watering duties on Wednesdays and Fridays. Andrew searches Aaron’s room every other day for evidence he might be using and never finds anything. He checks his elbows, too. Aaron throws a box of chinese takeout across the living room and chow mein hangs from the television for a full day afterwards. 

Andrew goes to work. Nicky goes to work. Aaron goes to work. Neil goes to run. Nicky calls Erik as often as he always does. He is still outrageously happy. Every time he goes grocery shopping now he arrives home with a new brand of protein bar for Neil to try. Aaron punches Andrew in the face when his secret stash of Reece’s peanut butter cups goes missing from his room. He also tries to get Neil to go to the hospital for a checkup. Andrew called it a lost cause as soon as the suggestion came out of his mouth. 

“I know your talking about me,” Aaron says one morning when Neil and Andrew sign a conversation in front of him. Neil ignores him to sign something else, which is infuriating to Aaron. 

“You’re more obvious than you think.” 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Andrew says. “Not everything is about you.” 

“I’m not talking about that,” Aaron says. “I’m talking about the fact that you two have obviously been screwing and keeping it a secret. You suck at it, by the way. Even Nicky has it figured out and he’s had the hots for Neil since day one.” 

“Hots?” Neil says. 

“I don’t have anything to hide from you,” Andrew says to Aaron. Neil takes a sip from his coffee. 

“You’re such a hypocrite,” Aaron says, and before Andrew can respond, he leaves. 

Neil says nothing of it. Andrew decides not to think too hard about it. 

The summer draws on. It begins to thunder. He loses track of kisses shared and nights spent in soft conversation. Neil does not mention his headaches again and Andrew’s arms do not bleed again but sometimes at night Andrew looks in the mirror and sees a version of himself he does not recognize, and sometimes Neil sounds English for one minute, and sometimes Nicky ups and leaves in the middle of a conversation. The lights flicker. He forgets a turn on the drive home and it takes him an extra ten minutes to get there. 

If there was something to be done Neil would have told him. But it has not come up, and he had lost interest in anything related to leaving this version of the universe, and so he did not pry and Neil said nothing and they went on. 

  
  
  
  


The end of summer begins. Andrew wakes to an empty dent beside him where Neil had slept. His running shoes are gone from the front door when he goes downstairs for coffee. He makes enough for two. 

Aaron arrives soon after. And Nicky after that. They exchange their usual morning greetings, which includes silence from Aaron and a cheerful smile and high volume ‘good morning, my darling cousin’ from Nicky. Andrew raises his mug in reply. 

“You have any plans today?” Nicky asks over three fried eggs. 

“Nicky, clean the fucking pan after using it,” Aaron says by the stove. 

“I have the day off,” Andrew offers to Nicky in response. 

“Do you want to go out?” 

“It’s a Wednesday.” 

“I don’t mean clubbing,” Nicky says, and his voice implies he knows the very suggestion was ludicrous but would plow ahead anyway. “I thought we could go out to dinner or something. As a family. Without the alcohol as an excuse to spend time together.” 

“That sounds like an awful idea,” Aaron says, and then curses when he tries to flip his egg over with a cake knife and it does not work. 

“Okay,” Andrew says. 

“What?” Nicky says. He looks as though he does not believe what he has heard. 

“I said okay,” Andrew says. “Your egg is going to burn if you don’t stop staring.” 

Aaron scowls. “Since when do you want to do anything with us?”

“Since now.” 

“I think Neil has changed him,” Nicky says, and he is glowing and Andrew wants to put a blanket over him because it hurts his eyes to look at. 

“Speak of the devil,” Aarons says, not kindly, when Neil steps into the room, sweaty and pink. 

“Andrew,” Neil says, and something in his stomach lurches at the sound of his voice. “I need to talk to you.” 

“Bye bye, lovebirds,” Nicky singsongs when Andrew gets up from his seat to go with Neil. 

In his room Neil sits on the bed and looks at his feet. 

“What’s going on?” Andrew says. 

“My head is splitting,” Neil says. “Something is wrong, Andrew. Right now. I have no idea what to do.”

Andrew sits beside him. “Tell me how to help you.” 

“I can’t…” Neil says. He sounds like a child, young and afraid. He keels over, his hands to his head, a small whine escaping his mouth. Andrew has never seen him this way before. His own body aches. He catches Neil before he can fall over onto his face and lowers himself to the ground with him. Their bodies flicker like a flame alongside each other. His hands look transparent. Neil presses the crown of his head to Andrew’s shoulders, his hands gripped tightly in the sleeves of Andrew’s sweater. 

“Neil,” Andrew says. He wants Neil to tell him how to help him. But he could scarcely keep himself from crying out in pain at the sting in his arms and the twisting in his stomach and the needles in his eyes. 

And then his body is stretched and he feels his body float. And Neil is breathing normally again and has lifted his head and released his grip. He looks at Andrew differently. His eyes are wavering, glossy, his body like a ghost Andrew could put his hand right through. 

Someone presses the barrel of a gun to the back of his head. 

“Move and I will shoot you.” 

It is a woman’s voice. Andrew knows she is not lying. He does not move. 

“Mom,” Neil says. “Don’t hurt him.” 

Mom. Neil’s mother was dead. Neil’s mother was English. Neil’s mother lowers the gun away. 

“Nathaniel?” 

Neil stands and Andrew follows, and when he turns, she is standing right there, and they are inside a motel room that smells of disinfectant. She looks younger than Andrew had expected, thin and bony, but her arms defined. The gun hangs at her side. She does not looked shocked to see them but wary. 

“You look older,” she says. 

“You look younger.” 

“You should not be here. I expected better of myself. Have I not warned you what is happening?” 

“No.” Neil says. “You’re dead.” 

“Dead.” 

“He caught up to us in Seattle.” 

“Oh,” she says, frowning. She seats herself on the bed and gestures vaguely at Andrew. “And who is this?” 

“This is Andrew.” 

“I warned you about fraternizing at least.” 

“That was before,” Neil says. His mother looks unhappy at his defiance. Perhaps she was unused to it. 

“You are stupid to think anything has changed, Abram. It is worse now than ever. They are tearing worlds apart in this search. Do not tell me you have not noticed the merging.” 

“I thought it was just a side effect,” Neil says. 

“They should not be so severe.” 

Neil looks from Andrew and back to his mother. “How did I die?” 

His mother looks away from him. She is a careful woman, her every expression calculated. Andrew knew because he had learned to do the same himself. Which is how he knows that this memory is a painful one for her. 

“You’re hearing has been affected,” she observes, gesturing towards Neil’s head in indication. She is looking for confirmation. 

“Yes.” 

“Would you like to know why?” 

Neil says nothing. His mother continues. Andrew listens carefully, watches Neil even more so. 

“I had planned for us to run that night. Someone must have tipped him off. We had only just left the city before he found us. He had bought out the police department and they had officers shutting down every road out of the city. He must have told them to shoot only to wound. You know he likes to finish his business himself.” 

She pauses, and then lifts the hem of her shirt up, revealing two old bullet wounds, one on her ribcage, one lower down, on her stomach. 

“They shot me first. I screamed at you not to stop but you did not listen. You never listened,” she says, and laughs, a bitter and sad thing. “You were distracted and I could do nothing because I could not move. They shot again. 

“You fell and lay on top of me. I thought you were using your body to shield me. I screamed at you to run, but you would not move, and so I lifted you off me and held you up and they had shot you right here.” 

She presses her hand to the side of Neil’s face, over his left ear, and closes her eyes. Andrew sits down. 

“Your ear had been torn off. The gunpowder had burned half of your face. You were still alive. In shock, I think, because you were so quiet and your hands did not shake when I held them. I said to you that I was sorry. I could not keep you safe. And you could heal. I knew you could heal. How lucky that shot was, only an inch away from killing you. But I could not move. Your father was just there. I knew what he would do to you if I let him take you. I had only one bullet left.” 

Andrew feels like he might throw up. Neil pulls his mother’s hand away from his face and places it back in her lap. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t fast enough.” 

“You were a child,” his mother says. “I did not teach you well enough.” 

“Andrew,” Neil says. Andrew stands to be beside him. His mother looks at him. He does not recognize what he sees in her expression. He didn’t care to. 

“If he finds out you are here he will follow you and kill you in your world, too. You have your own father to worry about,” she says. “You must leave.” 

“Too late,” a woman speaks. 

She stands in the doorway, playing with the safety of her gun. Her lips are painted red. She looks violent and confident. She flickers like static, worse than Andrew has ever seen, as though her body was glitching, appearing and disappearing over and over again. 

Neil shifts in front of Andrew. Andrew resists the urge to pinch him. 

“Lola,” Neil’s mother says. 

“Mary,” Lola says. “You’re looking spritzy. Your skin is absolutely glowing.” 

“What do you want?” 

“Gosh, I can’t seem to keep up! Is it different here? Are you guys one big happy family?” 

“You are ruining yourself,” Neil’s mother says. “Can you not see that?” 

“Thanks for the concern, darling. But I’ve only got one job here and that’s to take little Nathaniel here back to where he came from.” 

His mother says nothing. Andrew recognizes the shift in her stance. He pinches the fabric of Neil’s sleeve, tugs him closer, braces himself. 

Lola moves first. She raises her gun and fires. Neil’s mother sees it coming before it happens. She leaps towards Neil, shoving him to the ground, Andrew with him. 

“Run,” she says, and then rises.

He watches then as she closes the distance between her and Lola and manages to get the gun out of her hand, tossing it across the room so it clatters against the wall and falls where none of them can reach it. Lola makes a move to retrieve it but Neil’s mother stops her. She cries out, angry and animal, as she is tossed against the wall. Her nails run bloody lines down Neil’s mother’s arms. 

Neil cannot seem to move. Andrew touches his face and he focuses on him. 

“Neil,” Andrew says. “We need to go.” 

Neil nods. “The balcony,” he says, gesturing towards the back of the room where there is a sliding door and an outdoor balcony. They crawl on all fours in that direction, quickly, and Andrew unlocks it and slides it open and they are suddenly outside. 

The sky is storming. He looks down through the railing and there are people gathered and screaming around the base of the hotel building. He wonders if Neil knows about his fear of heights. His hands shake. 

Neil climbs over the railing and begins moving towards the balcony of the room next door. This requires scaling the wall for a brief distance before reaching it. Andrew follows suit, ignoring the groundless air underneath him, taking Neil’s hand on the other side and pulling himself over the railing to safety. 

The sliding door is unlocked. They ignore the loud confusion of the room’s guests to move into the hallway. There are people running past them, yelling of guns and blood and calling 911. Neil maneuvers the chaos easily with Andrew beside him. 

They fly down the stairs, and with each step he feels like something the building is collapsing above them. When they finally make it outside the building Andrew knows something has gone terribly wrong here, too. Around them people still scream. Two bodies lay on the ground. They do not have faces. 

From somewhere behind them a gunshot rings out. Andrew takes Neil by the wrist and runs. But there is Lola again, appearing in front of them, the crowd forking around here like a stampede avoiding an obstacle. She flickers, grins, wipes blood from her mouth. 

“Your mom is an awful pain,” she says. She takes a step towards them. Neil jumps and pulls Andrew with him. 

He stumbles, looks down and his hands have too many fingers and and his head might explode. Neil doubles over beside him and vomits. Andrew places a hand on his back. 

“I think I’m dying here.” 

“Careful,” Andrew says, holds him so he will not fall so hard, wipes the hair from his eyes. He is with his legs outstretched, two hands to his stomach, head lolling. A perfect match to this other Neil, Andrew sees, who is leaning against the wall in front of him, his legs outstretched, two hands to his stomach, head lolling. 

But this Neil was sitting in a pool of his own blood. It was smeared on his face like he had tried to wipe it away. He was trying to stay awake. Neil turns to where he is looking. 

“Oh,” he says softly. Andrew helps him stand. They go to him. He watches them come. His eyes look brighter against all the red. He is unafraid but broken. Neil sits on one side of this dying Neil. Andrew sits on the other. 

“He could come back,” this Neil warns. 

“We can take you with us,” Neil says. 

The other Neil smiles. There is blood on his teeth. “Can’t. He cut my achilles.” 

“Then I’ll carry you,” Andrew says. 

“No,” the other Neil says. “Listen. It's too late for me. But you still have a chance.” 

“Just let me help you,” Neil says. 

“Help yourself,” the other Neil says. He closes his eyes and breathes a stuttered breath. And then there is a gunshot and his body jerks and he goes perfectly still. 

“Well,” Lola says, the gun still raised and smoking. “Looks like little Nathaniel here ran out of luck.” 

Neil stands. “You’ve gone mad, Lola,” he says. “Don’t you see what you’re doing? Your body is falling apart.” 

“You sound just like your mother,” Lola says. “Too bad. It’s a real turnoff. Now don’t go calling for help. Your daddy owns half the cops in this city. No one is coming to find you. Now sit down. Both of you.” 

They sit, the concrete beneath them cold and Neil’s blood running on the floor. 

“Who’s your friend?” 

“No one,” Neil says. 

“He’s flickering just like you,” Lola says, poking at Andrew with her gun. “Share the family trade, do you?” 

“He doesn’t know anything.” 

Andrew almost turns to glare at him. Lola laughs and leans down in front of them. She traces a finger over Neil’s ear. 

“Then you won’t mind if I have a little fun with him," she says. 

“Don’t.” 

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t touch him.” 

“Only if you say please,” Lola says. 

Neil does not respond. Andrew understands his silence perfectly. Nothing meant anything to this woman. To beg was to entertain her. Neil would not allow her the satisfaction. Andrew would not allow it if Neil asked. 

Lola turns to Andrew and smiles. This close he can smell her breath and it is of smoke and bubblegum. She clicks her tongue. “You’re a pretty one.” 

Neil moves beside him. Andrew does not allow him to take the first hit. He throws his head back and then forward and smashes into Lola’s face so hard she has to use her hands to keep from falling backwards. She recovers quickly, slaps him in the face and then holds his chin in her hands, long nails digging into his skin. 

“You’ll regret that, sweetheart.” 

Andrew spits in her face. She laughs, wipes it with her other hand, and licks it off. Andrew wants to throw up. 

“Please,” Neil says, and Andrew thinks he almost will throw up. “Please don’t hurt him.”

“I like to hear it,” Lola says. There is lipstick on her teeth. “But darling I think it's a little too late for that now.” 

Lola stands and pulls a small serrated knife from somewhere behind her. She twists it in her hand, testing its weight, and then leans down again and glides it over Andrew’s face, down his neck and to his chest. 

“Move and I will slit his throat faster than you can blink,” she says to Neil, and then digs the knife into his chest. 

She makes easy work of it, and Andrew does not make a sound for fear if he does he will not stop for the rest of his life. Neil is saying something beside him but he cannot hear it over the rush in his head. When she pulls the knife away to wipe it on his pants Andrew manages to twist her arm up and she cries out but then she is digging the knife into his arm and he releases her and she is beating him and Neil is saying something in a voice he has not heard before and he is on the floor and cannot lift his head from the ground. It throbs, his brain swelling inside him, his eyes like they have been gouged out, ribs cracked, himself broken. 

And then Neil quiets and for a moment Andrew thinks perhaps they have killed him already and he was useless to stop it and now they would kill him, too. But when his vision is clear enough to see again there is a new man there, coming down the steps, and he has the same color hair as Neil’s lashes and the same color eyes, too. And Andrew knows who he is. 

He nudges at the dead Neil on the ground with one foot and hums at the lack of response. Then he stands in front of them. 

“Stand up,” he says, and Neil stands. Andrew watches from the ground, unable to move, a foot on his chest keeping him there. 

Neil starts to say something but his father takes him by the throat and lifts him so his feet only skate the ground. “You know better than to speak before I tell you to. Tell me you understand.” 

Neil, even as he is being strangled, manages to speak an affirmation. 

“Now you know I am not one to draw things out. But all this running has gotten me quite worked up. So we will start slow and work our way up, make a whole night of it. Maybe we’ll take your toes first. Lola, take care of his friend.” 

Lola smiles and presses more of her weight into Andrew’s chest. He feels something break and gasps for air. And then Neil claws at his father’s hand, digging in hard enough for him to release him from his grip. He falls, tackles Lola so her weight leaves Andrew’s chest. Neil scuffles with Lola, her wrist in his hand, and she drops her knife and it goes clattering on the ground. Andrew, on the ground himself, picks it up and slashes at Lola. She cries out and falls. Neil’s father kicks Andrew in the stomach. Lola screams and throws Neil off her, and he goes skidding on the floor. 

His father picks him up with one hand and shoves him against the wall. 

“That will cost you,” he says. Lola smiles then as he carves a line down his face with a knife in one hand, carefully, slowly, smiling himself like he enjoyed it. Neil tries to scream but the hand around his throat makes it sound less human and more animal. His father smiles. 

Their mistake, he thinks, watching with stinging eyes, was to think Andrew was done with. Though something must be broken in his chest and when he breathed he sounded wheezing, he could still stand. He could still wrap his hand around the handle of a knife they had so mistakenly left laying on the floor, the same one he had used to slice at Lola. There mistake, he thinks, is to be so engrossed in Neil and his pain they forget him. 

The best place to kill a man so they bled out in less than five minutes was the side of the neck, Neil had taught him. He presses the knife there and Lola makes only a sound like a sputtering faucet. Neil’s father turns to him, surprised, sinks the knife into Andrew's chest just as Andrew slits his throat. 

Neil is covered in blood. He looks at Andrew, wraps his arms around him, lowers him to the ground. 

His father is a corpse at their feet. Lola sputters something and then goes quiet. Neil presses his hand to Andrew’s heart. Andrew coughs and it sounds wet. Neil makes a sound like a sob. He holds him to his chest, shaking, and then shifts him so he is laying on his back.

Andrew knew death, a looming and constant presence, but never so well his own. It was an odd thing, foreign and familiar at the same time. He did not like it. He liked less how Neil was looking at him. 

“Don’t look at me like that.” 

“I’m not,” Neil says, but he just keeps doing it anyway and Andrew so badly wants to close his eyes, because his face is all bloody and he looks like he’s crying and Andrew hated it. It hurt more than the bleeding in his heart. It hurt more than his beaten body. 

“Don’t,” Neil says. “Andrew. Don’t go to sleep. C’mon. Stay awake. I’m right here.” 

He thinks it is fitting that he should die before Neil does. He is sure if it were another way he would not last long enough to grieve. If this story needed death, better it was his own than anyone else’s. He could not stand being afraid. It was a useless emotion. More so when there was nothing he could do about it. He felt like a child, small and helpless and tired. 

“Andrew,” Neil says. “Keep your eyes open. Look at me.” 

His hands press to his chest and it hurts but he does not have the energy to say so. Maybe blood has gotten in his eyes because he cannot Neil’s face well but he can feel him shaking. And maybe he is already dead because his own face is now beside Neil looking down at him. A ghost of himself. 

“How did you get here?” Neil is saying, and Andrew almost opens his mouth to answer the question but he realizes Neil is not talking to him but to this ghost Andrew. He must have missed the introduction. 

“I jumped. You know how hard it is to get through a police barricade? I was too late, anyway.” 

“He’s bleeding out too fast,” Neil says. This ghost Andrew assesses Andrew with something clinical in his eyes. But Andrew knows himself better than that, and he knows defeat, surrender, suicide, when it is written all over his own face. He sees it now. 

“I can save him,” he says. 

“What?” Neil says. “No.” 

This ghost Andrew looks at Neil like it hurts him to and then touches his face with just his fingertips, grieving something that was right in front of him, Andrew knew, because his Neil sat a corpse just a little away from them, still warm. He had been too late. 

“My family is dead and I couldn't save you either. And now I have nothing left,” he says. “So let me do this. You trust me, don’t you?” 

Neil swallows, looks down at Andrew in front of him, his hands soaked in blood, and nods. 

“Then trust me now. I want to do this. I’ll still be in him.” 

Neil closes his eyes, squeezes them tightly, takes his hands away from Andrew’s chest. 

“Okay,” Andrew says, looking down at his counterpart. He shifts, presses his forehead to Andrew’s forehead, breathes the same air. 

"It will be better for you," he says. Remember that.” 

Andrew closes his eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehe 
> 
> thanks for reading as always! 
> 
> x

**Author's Note:**

> end of prt 1/3 (prt 2 is juicy i am v excited) 
> 
> thanks for reading i hope you stick around 
> 
> happy holidays and merry kreisler! 
> 
> <3


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